


The Dusty Day Ballad

by WonderAss



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Blood Kink, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, F/M, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Friends With Benefits, Grief/Mourning, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Mental Anguish, Mental Health Issues, Mental Illness, Mild Smut, Psychological Trauma, References to Canon, Self-Harm, Slice of Life, Song fic, Sprinkles Of:, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-10-26 00:04:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17735216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WonderAss/pseuds/WonderAss
Summary: The Van der Linde gang has gone through a lifetime of grief over the course of just a few days, licking their wounds after the failed Blackwater heist and attempting to get back to business as usual. Javier is no stranger to these aches and pains: he copes by treasuring every moment he's given, even as bad habits, old and new, start to bloom.He might be able to tame them with a song, if he can keep from pulling open old wounds again and bleeding out.





	1. querido

**Author's Note:**

> Song Inspiration: "54321" by Mio

_well I could rest here all day long but i won't,_

_i'm not at a five anymore_

_and when i see you around here, well i know,_

_you're not kind anymore_

*

His mother always told him, over the rumbling of his stomach or the barking of government dogs, " _Hard nights taste better the next day_."

Oh, they had _plenty_ of those. Cold ones. Tired ones. Scared ones. That also meant plenty of better mornings, and for years his belly has been full with gratitude.

He'll have to swap hats today. The early noon's coming down hard already, scattering light with shotgun precision. He moves to the shade instead, studying the distant sway of grass beneath clouds pregnant with thunderstorms-to-be. It's a land shadowed by a sleepy blue curtain, doled out with more generous helpings of sunlight than he remembers seeing in a while. Dutch would call what he's feeling a kind of limbo, he thinks; his leg is caught in a memory's trap, and it's not so easy as tugging with all his strength and stumbling free. Then again, he might call it something else. That man had so many words inside him it was a wonder he was _ever_ hungry at all.

Javier picks up his guitar, and strums.

John is finally up and moving about. It's better than he could have ever hoped for, and he learned very young to dole out hope as carefully and fairly as he was able. This man's skin had been blotchier than market meat, with a fever only surpassed by the night terrors. Putting up a front had been easy enough for them both. How many scrapes had they gotten out of? How many _more_ would they face? Still...his poor friend hadn't been saved quite that day. The wolves were no longer hunting him, but another fear has taken their place, new shadows in the dark bloated with deeper meaning. It weren't a coyote howling three nights ago. _That_ much was for certain.

Now John sits on a tree stump just on the outer rim of the camp ring, a week-old paper in his hands, blinking and squinting through the sun like he's forgotten its taste. It's been seven days. Anyone else would have been out for seven more. Tough son-of-a-bitch.

Javier tunes the first string, then strums.

It's a good place they have here. Hopefully they can stay for more than a month. Hope's a precious thing, and he puts it into each flick of his fingers. Javier adds a sprinkle of peace, too. A...dollop, maybe. How does Pearson put it? A 'dash'? They all could use a dash of something more. Hosea a dash more of those herbs he mixes for that cough. Susan a dash of sugar, for that bitter tongue, _ha_. Maybe a dash of whisky, for them all. John's a heavy drinker, though. Not frequent, but...heavy. A dash of peace, then. For him.

Javier bobs his head in time with the chatter of birds, and keeps strumming.

"...What's the name of that one?"

His voice is the crackle of fire, and the melody trembles a little, slackens like a fishing line that hasn't quite figured out if there's a catch or not. Javier holds steady. Trickles his fingers over the strings and lets each ingredient sort themselves out in due time. It's a simple enough tune. It doesn't dive _quite_ into the classical arrangements Dutch is always blaring on his gramophone. It lilts more like...a familiar conversation, traveling down flattened paths, never wandering astray. Well-suited to a warm, quiet summer day like this, he thinks.

"Doesn't have one." Even though he's enjoying the view of the mountain peaks, Javier's eyes flicker, threatening a childish nap. "Not yet, anyway."

"It's good."

This man's eyes sink down low, too, pulled by unforgiving weights. Ah. Now _this_ is a good sign. His song is taking effect.

Too much of something spoils the broth (if that's how the saying goes), but a little confidence shouldn't taste _too_ bad. Javier sways his head again, lets the soft melody ripple with his pride, flickering rising, sweet note after rising, sweet note into the day's perfect air. He's played a million songs, in his life. Perhaps he sang even in the womb, kicking a rhythm against his mother's belly well before he let out the high note of life. Most places would take him, of course, as they happily took _any_ poor Mexican willing to sing or shuffle for change. Javier Escuella's songs are scattered all across the country. They've been mixed in with claps and howls, laughter and the clatter of bottles, threats and insults.

He's crept and wandered and shot his way through this self-titled land of the free, but there's nothing quite like the homes they set up under the stars. How could he have gone to so _many_ places, done and seen so _many_ things, and yet the most enchanting music is the clamor of his people? The rustle of trees is lovely, indeed, and the birds sound like they're cheering him on, but then Uncle lets out a rowdy laugh and his song _breathes_ , comes _alive_. Lovely Abigail laughs somewhere to the left, sitting with their newest member, and Lenny calls up from down the hill, at a passing traveler or returning member, perhaps. It's the music of life. Ay, a composition strung together with loyalty, _fierce_ love and bravado.

John huffs out a gust of air, and the tune breathes again, a low exhale on the very last string. He's tucked into himself, though. Lost in his chest. Javier has to be the one to start this next verse.

"You haven't slept much, huh?" He asks. John shifts a little on his tree trunk chair, his weary, uncomfortable shuffling just another beat in the one-man orchestra. A thin note of sympathy enters the song. It's hard to get cozy when battered and bloodied.

"No. I..." He huffs again. Sharp through his nose like a horse. "No."

His companion looks ready to peel apart and scatter all over the ground. Javier takes pity -- another careful helping, not _too_ much -- and saves another question for later, hands roaming idly now, letting the song with no name drift off into the blue and spur meaningless chitter like their company above. He casts a useless warning glance from beneath the brim of his hat. They better not shit on them.

"You should get some rest. Who knows when we'll have to pack up and leave again."

The paper shuffles, moodily. A funny match to the rustling branches and whispering grass. Javier thinks idly to the bounty of music that comes from trees, and the morbid thought that crinkling newspaper might be their death rattle.

"You sound like Abigail." John mutters, reading-yet-not-reading through his dark, scraggly hair. The wind keeps pushing it out of place. Not that he ever _styled_ it much, anyway.

"Am I wrong?"

"Never said that."

Javier shakes his head and looks back to his guitar, even though he's long since stopped needing to study his hands as he plays. Hasn't had to do that since he was still a hopeful, angry, ridiculous boy in Parral. Memories whisper up and down the hills, tug at his ankles, but then Bill lets out a curse and Hosea hushes him, and he's thrown back into the moment. The melody holds strong as twine, but he doesn't even mind if he doesn't catch anything more than this moment's peace. When he looks over John's eyes are drifting again, head bobbing like a cattail. It's a wonder that newspaper doesn't slip right from his fingers.

Interesting. This little song of his... _might_ just be a lullaby.

Javier doesn't stare too long. John has always had an uncanny ability to tell when he was being watched. He lets his gaze drift, repeats the same notes, linking the bridge with a new and tender hook that feels like the hazy aftermath of hard laughter. He doesn't change it too much. It still speaks of loyalty. It still speaks of peace. It speaks of everything good that he's had the grit and luck to enjoy with his family. Even now, after a heist that went sour and the lost of so _many_ they loved. His throat quivers with the urge to croon, perhaps like a mother wants to hold her baby, not that he would know too much about that. No, he keeps his mouth firmly shut and his head on the sway. He breathes. He strums...

...and so does the banded scar on his neck, twanging like a banjo string. He swallows hard, careful not to close his eyes and better see a mother and a sister...splashing through mud to grab his outstretched hands, sinking into black with each failed snatch of air, coarse jeers from greedy men. Javier strums, though his fingers feel icy. Javier breathes, though the rope is just invisible now. Sharp through his teeth, face carefully still, as composed as he's always _had_ to be. It has to go through music. It _has_ to be filtered through sound, tea straining, venom through teeth.

"Dame dos dedos. Dame tres dedos. Que ladrón _tan_ pequeño." He hisses over the notes, not-quite-talking. Those petty insults _could_ be lyrics to a song. A means of wrestling those long-ago thoughts, squeezing their throats, bending them bend to his will. No. ...No. They just sour the day. Javier angles his head over his shoulder and spits to the ground. Spits them _out_. "...No."

The paper crinkles, too sharply to be the push of the breeze. He can see John watching him out of the corner of his eye. Aware of what's happening, if not quite understanding it. Javier thinks of him, now. A shivering rabbit caught on a snowy ledge, mere hours away from breathing his last. The rope around his neck has lassoed everything else and is trying to tug it all out of order. He lets it out. He sings it to the birds. Que será, será. It happened. He's _here_. They both are. That's that.

Javier pauses only to rub at his left eyebrow, where a flung rock left a permanent mark. He scrubs at it, pulls at the hair, like he can dig through his own _body_ to peel it right off like a sticker-

-and the grass rustles with a new tune. He's awake again. Surely enough, John has finally dropped his newspaper. It's just one second he glimpses the man's eyes fully closed, freshly scarred face limp with peace...then, in a quick-draw he's alert again, eyes hard and mouth set.

"Shit." He grumbles, without feeling, and plucks it up. Javier's melody turns into gibberish as he tries and fails to stop his chuckle.

"Go on. Get some rest, John." He strokes his brow back into place, the chill on his fingers gone. "You won't recover staring at the same spot on the paper all day."

The man starts to touch his face, no doubt to rub or drag a hand down like he always does, and hisses when he tugs at the stitches.

"Sick of being cooped up in bed. Another day of doin' nothin' and bein' fussed over and I'm gonna go _crazy_."

"Nothing wrong with being fussed over. Lot of men out there would kill to have what you have."

John wrinkles his nose. Javier chuckles again, and a sour note rings out. A bird throws itself into the noon, offended. He pauses to better tune the second string into compliance. It's been misbehaving a lot today. He might have to replace it soon.

"...Don't have to sleep in your tent." He adds, then strums again, smiling at the smooth, clear response he gets back. "It's a lovely day."

Susan yells at the girls to get their behinds on over and help her with Pearson's new shipment. Karen tells her that attitude of hers could do some of the heavy lifting. Javier gives in to his laughter today, the melody in his mind's eye spreading water rings into a little pond. John stands up, shuffles through his peripheries with a limp that hasn't quite been laid to rest. Maybe after this he'll give in to another beloved tradition and head a mile east. There are _plenty_ of bluegill, so he heard. Enough that he could add a 'dash' of something else to the usual stewpot, and perhaps even put a smile on Pearson's face. It might mean another diatribe about his stint in the Navy, but, eh, so be it.

His song hitches for the hundredth time when John's head presses into the area between his hip and thigh. Javier shifts a little, just enough to better lean his back against the tree trunk, then keeps playing.

"Hate this." John shifts up, picks out a rock from beneath him and flicks it away, then slumps back onto his side. "Haven't been able to hunt. Guard. _Feel_ useless. Abigail's callin' me useless. That woman _never_ fails to remind me."

"You're not useless." He offers, then snickers. "Though give you a few more days and you might topple Uncle from his throne."

"Yeah. Thanks. You wake me up in fifteen, okay?" He lays carefully on the (least) injured part of his face. "Just...fifteen."

Javier looks over his shoulder and studies the way John gives the stitches on his face one last pat. Not scratching, not quite, but a slow trickle of fingers. A sullen rub, maybe. A thoughtful touch, perhaps. The rare time he sees him these days he's always poking at them. For one reason or another.

"...Sure, John."

Susan and Karen are bickering now, without their usual venom and more of the bubbling humor that always hints at an easy evening and good food. Speaking of which, he really should get started on that fishing trip soon. It's a short ride on down, but coupled with a few hours of waiting and watching, if the fish are feeling particularly sassy. Javier glances over his shoulder again at John's now-sleeping face. At the scars clashing an inelegant criss-cross with his windswept hair. At his curled hands, tucked right beneath his chin like a squirrel, mouth parted with the faint, easy breaths that come with deep sleep. For once, he's not scowling.

Javier pauses in playing...and thinks. His thoughts of the camp come in English. His thoughts of the life he left behind roll in the accent of Perral. When he feels the itch on his neck they sing instead. A ballad to his weakness and damage both. He rubs at his eyebrow again, then slides his hand down to his throat, holding it as if it might fall off.

...The fish will have to wait. Javier sings as softly as he can, notes broken and meandering and thoroughly unimpressive now, though John, for all intents and purposes, is dead to the world.

_tienes que quedarte aquí_

_sí, así, aquí_

_viva en la casa única, de la familia única_

_no pongas los codos sobre la mesa_

_sí, aquí, mamá, sí, aquí_

_dónde está, mijo, dónde está, adonde fuiste no está seguro_

_no lo sé, mamá, no lo sé_

_ahora mismo estoy en un hogar extraño, un hogar pálido_

_y yo quiero regresar a casa_

_ahora_

_quiero regresar a casa_

*

One strum. Two strum. Three. Three hours now. If his boots are shined any further they'll rub right off his _feet_.

Javier tucks his brush in his inner coat pocket. He doesn't bother looking up when a pair of upper-class ladies hiss at the sight of him, mincing around Valentine's dry dirt road on their way to the inn. He doesn't look up when the local deputy gives him a greeting veiled with threat, as they always do, nor when the man growls about 'damn foreigners not speaking English'. He only looks up when a familiar splinters-and-sandalwood voice enters his world again, softened just so by what sounds like a few bottles.

"Thick-headed _bastard_."

His sentiments are echoed perfectly, but in a slurred Texan accent still cut from another cloth. Javier watches John stomp inelegantly up the porch's stairs. His scowl slips like oversized shoes, brows slack and gaze nowhere. He's very drunk.

"You see him?" He asks. Javier shakes his head. John spits, with enough presence of mind to do it on the dirt, not the wood. "Tch. When's he...gettin' here, then? Waited all this goddamn time, ain't _nothin'_ in this stupid, hick town, told him that..."

Ay, Bill's as dumb as a sheep, without the courtesy to be soft. He's probably spent the entire talk with that rancher putting on that same pose Dutch does, because when he's not viewing him as a leader he's treating him like a father that never visited. Maybe a god. Javier's smile turns a little mean. No, he's probably just counting and recounting those sheep. They'll be here all night.

"Yeah, what's so funny?" John's face hovers closer than he realizes, stinking drunk that he is. "Come on. Out with it."

"Just thinking the only thing sillier than Bill making sheep rustling complicated is you going and getting wasted at the bar when you could be doing _anything_ else." Javier tilts his head up to avoid his breath. "You honestly couldn't wait until we got back to camp?"

"We've _been_ waitin', Javier." He sniffs and rubs his nose with the back of his hand. "I'm goddamn bored."

It wasn't the boredom that got him -- he rarely felt the word, boredom was just a different word for peace -- but he knows John also speaks to the irritation of how they got here. What was the saying, again? 'That makes two of them'? While he's turning the phrase over and over in his head -- blocky in that way English phrases often get, even now -- John tries to snatch a kiss. Misses, of course, and knocks against his chin. A breeze could push him down. Javier turns his face a little more and plants a firm hand on John's chest, peeking out of his undershirt in a way that would be nice, any other day.

"Jesus. Sit down before you fall over, John."

"Only if I can use you as a chair."

"This chair will _stab_ you, amigo."

That doesn't deter him. He wouldn't be a son of Dutch if he were easily cowed. John snickers and wheezes, breath heavy with alcohol, and tries again, rough lips catching on the shell of his ear. The irritation of the day threatens to leave. Javier's skin ripples at the possibility of his rough touches...as well as the _very_ public place he's choosing to pull this act. Then John tries to box him in like he's some cute little barmaid, burrowing his face into his hair and knocking off his hat. Javier snorts annoyance. ...All right. That's enough.

He knocks a knee against the side of John's leg, letting his drunk balance do the rest and and pushing him sideways. John's arms flail a little, when all he does is slump down on the bench.

"Why'd you drink so much?" Javier tries to snatch the bottle to wet his throat, but John tugs it away, no doubt steamed over being turned down.

"Felt like it." He takes a deep drink, to spite him. Javier rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, why'd you feel like it?"

John's brow bunches up (or it valiantly tries). He looks more confused than angry. The man blows out a sigh and leans back, stretching out his legs and tapping dirty nails on the bottle top. Javier rolls his eyes _again_ , then settles more comfortably, crosses one ankle over the other. If John can't find a lie, he doesn't answer at all.

"All right. Well. Maybe I should go look for him so we can go on home." Javier offers. John downs the rest and stifles a belch, then bobs the bottle.

"Don't bother. Bill knows where we are. He can chase us, if he's so lost."

Javier's scowl feels etched on. If Arthur tagged along he would have probably made a joke about how it clashes with his outfit. Oh, it just _hasn't_ been a productive day.

It started off well enough, with a sunny afternoon paving the way for a good kill or a good mark, but many hours later little else has turned up except a big, _dumb_ plan by big, dumb Bill. They should have had a few sheep to resell to the shadiest bidder by now. A solid enough $100, maybe $150. John wasn't particularly prized for his eloquence -- not when put next to Dutch, Hosea, even Arthur -- but he could either threaten someone into action or, when in the right mood, put on a everyday affect that got people listening. Like a downtrodden, friendly vagabond. His voice was mesmerizing enough as it was, but he could turn that violent, risky history of his into a shoulder people wanted to lean on.

Javier's fingers ghost up to scratch irritably at his neck scar, nails scraping over the knob of flesh that protrudes almost as firm as the rope that created it. It wasn't _much_ of an act, aside from the intent to rob, and that's likely why he does it so well. Bill, of course, is more insecure than a girl without breasts. Can't _stand_ being upstaged by his beloved leader's golden boy. He insisted on doing the talking -- not many in this town would willingly sell sheep to a Mexican, he took great care to remind him -- and here they were, idle and drunk, side-by-side, and with nothing to show for it. Maybe a big, upper-class family in the city can get away with not doing much for days at a time, but not the Van der Linde gang. Javier quietly seethes at all the things they could've done instead.

He doesn't realize he's been picking until John's head butts against his cheek like a lonely cat.

"Hey, stop that." He slurs. His eyes aren't even open. "Knock that off."

"Mind your own business, John." Javier bobs his shoulder, but it doesn't deter him. He's heavier than a brick house. "Don't you have being drunk to get to?"

" _God_ , you're mean sometimes."

Yeah, and he can _get_ meaner. He wants his guitar. There was no reason to bring it to a job (or _potential_ job). Maybe he should learn to play harmonica or the flute, something he can take anywhere. Javier shifts, fidgets, tries to lock onto something of interest, but there's nothing remotely of the sort in this shoe of a town. Slowly, inevitably, his eyes dip down to his wrists; his skin has flourished in the American sun, but the the pale grooves dipping in and out of the brown never fade. That never will. No matter how many songs he plays.

_"Why do you pick at those? They still hurt you?"_

_"In a way."_

Hosea has commended on his stature and appearance many, many times in the past. He once joked that he got some of his 'regal countenance' from old Dutch. Ha, most _definitely_. While he chose to keep as much as possible from his home, he didn't need the dirty shoes or frayed pants. Those he was _more_ than happy to leave in the past. Learning how to embrace his appearance had been its own sort of freedom, even if he did get compared to a prized cock here and there. Eh. Those who said such things often thought different with a knife to their neck.

Those two ladies leave the inn again. Javier pretends to find the building across him fascinating and rubs at his wrists, each pass of calloused skin on stretched skin shivering tension into the air. The clothes he wore was another way to free himself, still, from these rope burns. What they _said_ he was. Maybe deep down...he was trying to dress that dirty, angry little boy up. Give him what he deserved.

Dutch may be everyone's father, in a sense, but Hosea...he was the uncle. _Just_ like the one he grew up with and loved so dearly, even down to the way they sat at the table with a book in hand. Just like the one...he watched fed to pigs, a man who cared so much and knew no different, right up to his dying hours. Hosea was the first to ask why their newest member kept picking open old wounds (" _Literally_." He had said, face long and sad). Javier couldn't answer then, with his broken English and stubborn fear. It's a little tough to answer now, even just to himself. It's just something his fingers _do_ , when they don't have strings to pluck or triggers to pull. It gets real bad on certain days, but it's just fine on others.

He barely notices when his nails break the skin. Only when they dig in and touch a nerve does he twitch.  _Ah_. He hastily thumbs away the blood beads that rise, careful not to stain his sleeves. He has to press down firmly, urge the cut to well up prematurely. It's not the pain the bothers him. A minute later it closes up. He sighs without air, sucks the smudge off his thumb, then tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. Rubs at his goatee, freshly trimmed this morning. Composes himself like a song. Line-by-line. Note-by-note. John shifts against him, but only to reach up with his free hand and scratch sloppily at the stitches in his cheek.

Javier whistles. He whistles that melody from his running, struggling home, so even if it's forgotten by the time he gets back to camp someone or something will catch it on the breeze. His fingers strum invisible strings, or perhaps wring invisible necks shaped like Bill's. John's head stays on his shoulder, lolling drunkenly as he fights a losing battle against sleep, empty bottle slipped halfway and still stuck in one limp hand.

_flores, flores, rosas, flores_

_las orejas de la niña necesitan más_

_pero no hay flores_

_por aquí_

_querido_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a sweet little interaction you can sometimes see at camp while at Horseshoe Overlook (and the header of this fic). Written while drunk and sad and lonely. This started off as a short piece on a peaceful moment between two great characters, one not at all influenced by how badly I'm yearning for the breezy days of summer. Now it's a little longer and, like usual, with a little more pain.
> 
> I love to write songs (you see a lot of this in my other fics) and I haven't really done much in Spanish. Now seemed like a good chance to try a little, even though I'm intermediate at best.


	2. mí

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Inspiration: "King Of What" by The Revivalists
> 
> Trigger warning for microaggressions, racist slurs and a panic attack/dissociation.

*

_i got my bullets, bag and stone don't wake me up I'm in the zone_

_and I believe the trees not those innuendo seeds_

_everything is light, see no voodoo in the night_

_hear no evil, fear no evil what's the reason for the fight_

*

His father once told him, " _A lone man's prayer is a song, but a family's prayer is a choir_."

He never forgot. Even when that rope cut off his air and dug into the tender flesh of his neck. It echoed through the years, holding fast when so many other memories lay down in the dust and breathed their last. Even after he crossed the Mexico-Texas border and found his new routine not feeding the family chickens or carrying water, but begging on his knees...he _never_ forgot. His God would not forget him, would _never_ forget him, so he does the same. It's their wisdom he shares with Dutch and Hosea one night, heart heavy with the songs within him. A raincloud that's been drifting far too close and threatening to soak him and everyone he knows to the bone.

"We said our goodbyes on the mountain, but...it felt hasty. We didn't have that much time to really honor their memories, all that they _did_ for us, and I just feel they..." Javier clears his throat behind one hand, flexing his fingers like he'd scrub dirt off his gloves. "...Jenny, Mac, Davey...we should offer them a little more. Just in case they get lost on their way."

They both agree, and under the dusk of evening the entire gang prays together, side-by-side and, for some, hand-in-hand.

Dutch had been the one to bid farewell for _all_ of them in that abandoned cabin. He leads again, standing by the fire with his hands folded behind his back and his eyes lost to shadow. His words are a light and the entire gang follows closely as he talks about what Jenny, Mac and Davey brought to the Van der Linde gang. Even Molly, who many still hardly knew, himself included, is moved by his words. She dabs a delicate handkerchief beneath her eyes when he talks about the brothers' lonely upbringings. How they had no family like this, or even close; their brotherhood had been all the knew, for a long time.

Only Micah lingers away from the fire. Close enough to be in the loose circle, but only just. Javier keeps the sneer from his face, focusing his thoughts inward where they need to be. How _odd_ he feels about those two, looking back on the blur of days now. Both Mac and Davey...had represented much of what he  _didn't_ want to be. Ha. He should've hated them, if he's being perfectly honest.

They had been so self-centered, anarchic without any of the necessary _dreaming_ , and even then, the three of them had gotten along well. Fought side-by-side as brothers, never doubting where the barrel would be turned. Died, as brothers, and he wishes he could've spent just one more day riding alongside them. Javier says as much when it's his turn. He stare off into the spaces between shoulders at where both of those men would have been hovering, never ones to get _too_ fond and familiar. When he mentions the spitting contests Mac and Davey regularly got into Arthur's laugh breaks the silence, a choked rumble that seems to pain him greatly.

Tilly has to mop her face with her sleeve when she speaks of Jenny and her fierce humor. It hurts to watch. Ever since he met her five years ago he knew Tilly Jackson to be somehow gentle _and_ strong as iron. She'd barely complained in the blizzard and even sang on the journey to Horseshoe, but now the song she's kept under lock and key has come out, quivering her voice like a rabbit's spine. Soft tears, for a soft woman, from a soft woman. Javier didn't cry so much these days, but his own eyes sting now at the _loneliness_ in her voice, worse than a liquor bite. When Lenny steps up to offer some words of his own, they fall true. One and one, for each of them.

Uncle makes a joke that Mac and Davey are probably squabbling on their way to heaven. Arthur responds that heaven would be far too dull for them. Javier chuckles. Everyone does. Swanson's stern face slackens, tries to maintain his affect and withers under the brunt of laughter. When Javier looks past the bowed head of Mary-Beth and the gently shaking head of Susan he can just catch John's face. His face is firm. Calm. Brows hovering soft on a face still pulling itself together. Everyone's voice fade when their eyes meet over the fire. After a second or two the very corner of his mouth twitches. A small, sad little smile; wavering just like their messy little family, unable to stay in place. He wants to stand beside him, but it doesn't seem right, with Abigail already leaning in close.

Reverend pulls out his Bible and commemorates their send-off with a proper verse. Not all of them are Catholic. Not all of them are Christian. Some didn't even believe in God, or _any_ god, but somehow...the air feels different once the last holy word has been spoken. A sense of peace that wasn't quite there before. Backs are patted. Hugs are given. Bill is sniffling, though he insists he got dust in his eyes, even when Hosea offers comfort. Javier accepts jostles on the arms, nothing too close, and turns down an embrace from Tilly, though with a kind word. They all drift back to their life, of eating and smoking and loving. The only way to truly honor those who had passed is to do what they no longer could not.

That is, all except for Dutch, who walks over and stands close beside him.

"...That was a wonderful thing you suggested. I think we're all better for it." He murmurs. Javier shrugs, digging in his pocket for a smoke. His chest feels clogged. It will always be stuffed full of something, he's learned, and right now...clouds of tobacco sound best.

"We need to use our peace to the fullest." Damn. He's out of cigarettes. Dutch offers him his pipe. Javier considers, then takes it with a nod of gratitude. "Everything feels so...I don't know. Tenuous?"

"It's _always_ tenuous. We just pretend otherwise." He tilts his head. "...You haven't been yourself these past few weeks."

Javier doesn't respond immediately. He savors the taste, sighing the smoke out only reluctantly, and hands it back, even as his chest clamors for more. Maybe he'll pester Arthur for a few of his cigarettes later. He's gotten hold of a suspicious amount lately and a part of him wonders if a job has been paying him in both cash and highs.

"I'm always myself."

"Of course, of course. There's _always_ a part of us that never truly goes away, in spite of the world's attempts to sculpt us with its cold, uncaring hands..." He trails off. The rest of the speech doesn't come. Dutch is shrewd, and he knows something sharp is coming his way. "Even knowing that, well...I still _worry_ , Javier. I'm not sure I like what I'm seeing and you know first-hand I'm not one to sit back and let my worries go unsaid."

No. He followed Dutch because he pursued honesty, in every single form it _took_. Javier leans back on his heels, urging the buzz to spread to the cold parts of him as he watches John take his leave of the others to head off past the trees, his good eye angled his and Dutch's way. Before he can figure out the look on his face the man vanishes behind the night's curtain, off to his guardpost. He stiffens when Dutch rests his hand on his arm.

"What we did just now was good, but this gang isn't strong because of the occasional display of vulnerability, the...hard hands we're dealt." Then he pulls away, right when Javier's skins starts to ripple with distaste. "I need you _with_ me. That means every single last part of you. Things seem difficult now, even impossible, but it's-"

"-loyalty that keeps us together." Javier repeats, obedient as a boy, though the heel of his mind echoes traitorous asides. That he _was_ loyal to his mother, his sister, his uncle. That loyalty didn't _change_ things- "I know. I'll never forget, Dutch."

Dutch's smile stretches wide, a fatherly fondness wrinkling around his eyes.

"Good man." He turns back to face the campfire, where Uncle has picked up his banjo and started to play. "...You truly are, Javier. As good as anyone _can_ be."

Yes, he told him that, too. More than once. Javier listens to the ramshackle notes carry on the crisp night air, the buzz in his chest now as warm and sweet as an ember.

*

It was a bad idea from the start. Dutch once told him there were rarely bad ideas, just bad executions, but this was truly, honestly, a _very_ bad idea.

Javier realizes it while tuning his guitar by the fire one peaceful night, his family surrounding him in a crooked gaggle and babbling the night away. The jagged gouges in his skin look like music notes. He's in an easy mood, stew and a beer warming his belly, and the epiphany strikes him so hard he cries out and startles Susan. Maybe...he could make a _song_ out of them. Suck out each doubt and nightmare like poison from a snake bite! He won't do it by the campfire, though. It's a place for them to bare their soul, yes, but not _this_ way.

The song will have to grow during this downtime, before it's time to retire for the night. Many of the songs he played in the late hour were slow, soft ballads. The perfect type of meandering acoustic fit for drifting off to sleep to, but the melodies scratching his skull might sound _too_ odd. He's not sure. They need a voice first. Javier offers a companionable nod to Lenny as he shuffles past, off to his bedroll. Yes, it's just polite. He waits patiently and scratches down loose sheet music fashioned after the tallies on his skin, even as lyrics take root and bloom from deep within him, tickling his lungs, _demanding_ to be coughed out.

When he first starts playing it feels like waking up.

The song first hits the air erratic. Rain patter, Javier thinks instantly, minding his composition with the aid of lanternlight. His fingertips dust the strings; loose and easy, nothing as concentrated as a performance. Then it's more like a bird's song; a sparrow's, fanciful and all over the place. He's _delighted_. He'd borne music on his body this entire time, and it took him until _now_ to know it! Maybe he'll have to look in a larger mirror for the others; the lashes on his upper back from when he got caught disobeying his village's new curfew, the slash from a knife that missed his kidney. Until then, he makes music of the ropes that held fast his wrists when-

_"No, por favor, por favor, es solo un niño, no puede-"_

_"¡Cállate!"_

A spike of cold air clashes with the high. Makes him go from sweetly dizzy to terribly, awfully still. ...He hadn't looked at those men. Not their faces. He'd known better. He'd minded their black leather boots as he shuffled home from church, head low and hands where anyone could see. " _As submissive as a woman._ ", his mother instructed him before he'd been old enough to help around the house, " _Until you become a man._ "-

_"Dije que-"_

_"¡No!"_

The melody hitches, and his fingers freeze-

_"¡Mamá! Mamá-"_

_"Javi-"_

God carved out a path for everyone. Thanking Him meant following his guidance and treasuring every step of the way. Even when it was hard. _Especially_ when it was hard. He doesn't want to think about what could have happened if he had left church an hour later. If the family he had to protect through fleeing and the sanity he was lied to about _having_ and the woman he was foolish enough to fall in love with could have all been slipped past on that one single, defining, essential late hour after prayer-

_"¡Quita la soga! Por favor, no puede respirar, la quita-"_

He claws at the strings, strangles the notes, and the song dies.

Javier leans his face up. Breathes. Swallows, then sniffs, _hard_ , a sudden spark that burns deep within. He tries to pinch out by gripping the bridge of his nose. All bad ideas seem like good ones at first. Five years. Five years since he fled in the dead of night and he can still see her, now, and he can still hear them, _now_. There was never any true hope for a tearful reunion. Not that he didn't _dream_ of it. It was the only thing that kept him going, his first few weeks in America. It was delusion, though. A tiny, shriveled little dream shouldered on his back, because he didn't _have_ anything else other than faith and hunger.

His mother...was so beautiful. He never found out how she died. Only that she was buried near the church they went to thrice a week, right alongside a husband that rarely saw her for drinking. His sister...he doesn't know. He'll _never_ know, until the day he truly loses his mind and returns to Mexico. The only word he caught was she found a man and tried to flee...but like so much of his past it's all leaves in the wind. It's crossed his mind more than once the letter he received could have been altered, yes. A fabrication to bait him into action. Wouldn't they have been happier stories, then, if it were to lure him back home? Deep down...he knew it was true.

"Dije que...dije que..." He tries, plucking strings that now feel like strangers, the callouses on his fingertips sensitive in a way they haven't been in years. "...La soga..."

It's sand on his tongue. Maybe it's music, but right now it's not. Not now. Not _now_. Javier sniffs again. Spits onto the ground, then grinds his heel into the spot.

Like a child trying to outrun a thunderclap he suddenly, viciously needs to see Hosea. Needs to hear his relaxed voice, its curiously high pitch. He needs to see Dutch. Sit and cross his legs and listen to one of his many stories, _any_ tale that he'd deign to tell, but both of them are in their tent, no light to be found and likely deep asleep. ...Damn it. Damn it! Javier yanks off the guitar strap, shoves the instrument away. He winces at the clack of wood on the ground. Oh, damn it _twice_. It'll be a scuff to buff out in the morning. He makes a mental apology to his dear friend, feeling along the lower bout with fingers too cold to find much of anything.

Javier doesn't record the rest of the song, or bother to remember any of the notes, for that matter. He crumples the paper in his fist and shoves it unceremoniously in his day satchel. He doesn't want to dream. He has no choice, if he's to support his family. There's peace in a no-win scenario, he considers as he tugs his hair out of its tail, then lays on his stomach.

Javier closes his eyes and returns to Mexico the only way he can.

It's hotter and drier than the forest Hosea found. The language isn't barked at him, but sung. His sister is there. His mother isn't. Javier keeps trying to pray, but the waiter keeps pouring him more tequila. When he drinks it doesn't go down, but back up. Up, up, up out his eyes to trickle honey-gold rivers down his cheeks and down onto the table. He won't drown in it like his father did. He wants to, yes, but he won't. Javier watches fish wind through the flooded bar. Casts out a line and pulls up the heads of loved ones, and tosses them back.

He wakes up weary in a way that has nothing to do with the labor of yesterday.

Strauss is awake, reading his ledger by lanternlight even as the dawn is starting to paint the sky pink. Charles is pulling on a pair of leather gloves, just getting off his shift. No need to tiptoe here. Javier enjoys the bite of cold water on his face and takes time combing his hair. He finds John is alone in his tent, as he's been since they moved here. He and Abigail had... _interesting_ sleeping arrangements, to say the least. The man grunts when Javier knuckles him in one of the few places he hadn't been chewed on, turning around and blinking at him blearily beneath the crook of one arm.

"Go fishing with me."

*

...Not immediately, of course. A trip to Valentine is needed to grab a few things Bill forgot on his big mission to become Dutch's new favorite. How that man managed remember how to count to _three_ was...

"It's beyond me, right?"

The shop owner glances over at the pair of them, bearded chin still in one hand and the other still flipping through a goods magazine that's seen better days. John scrubs at his eyes with thumb and forefinger, then quints at him, mouth twitching with the hundredth stifled yawn of the day. A decent night's rest still eludes him. Javier offers a quick, sympathetic smile. Lullabies were helpful, but he might have to fuck this man to sleep.

"When you can't, uh...really fathom something." He clarifies. "Like it's just completely ridiculous. It's beyond you, right?"

"...Yeah, that's right." He gives in and yawns anyway, mouth hitching when his stitches catch, then shakes his head irritably. "What's beyond you?"

"Bill. How Dutch hasn't kicked him out yet."

"Dutch values loyalty. Bill's got a brain filled with cotton, sure, but he's _definitely_ loyal. Never a question." John glances at the shop owner -- now penciling something into a notebook -- then swipes a tin of salmon. "You look good today."

Javier smiles inwardly. Nods and picks up a white china plate off its stand, tapping it experimentally. He heard Molly moaning about the silverware yesterday, going off on yet _another_ woeful rant about her feminine needs and all that they entail. It's none of his business, and he certainly won't tell Dutch off about her, but...he figures it doesn't hurt to keep the peace. He'll offer this to her as a thoughtful gift. Cheer her up after the retreat from Blackwater. If she's happy, Dutch is happy. If Dutch is happy, the whole camp is. It'll probably break within the week...but, eh.

"I look good every day." Javier murmurs, distracted, setting the plate to one side, then inspecting the cups. Nope. Cracked. He sets it down, then leans up for the lantern oil. He hisses under his breath when his fingers barely brush the topmost shelf. _Stupid_ shop. What was the point of stacking everything to the ceiling? He might have to ask for a stool. Javier leans back down, briefly considers jumping...then just stares as John's arm snakes past and plucks the bottle for him.

"Here."

Javier twists his jaw. Glances at the front counter (still reading, still bored). ...He snatches it.

"...Thanks."

He turns back to the shelf, but, oh, he _catches_ that ridiculous little sliver of teeth. John hums a pleased, tuneless melody under his breath, drifting around to his other side to continue 'browsing'. He hovers too close, likely waiting for another opportunity to treat him like a coy maiden.

"...Very good, really." He reaches up to pick up a bag of rice and look it over, in plain sight so it's less obvious he's been stealing half the things on the list. That, or he's just showing off. That bag was _also_ on the top shelf. The hair on the back of Javier's neck tickle as he leans in, just so, and breathes him in. "You do something extra to it?"

Ha. He doesn't get much practice these lines on Abigail, because they can't come within ten feet of each other without snarling and snapping. Javier purses his lips and nods, reading the label on a can of beans.

"Yes, actually. I brushed _and_ washed today." John's dismissive snort is his reward. Javier bobs his chin at him, still not taking his eyes off the label. "Also, you won't need that."

"Need what?"

Javier flicks his eyes meaningfully to the stack of canned salmon. John follows his gaze, quirks an eyebrow right back at him. ...Hm. The lone drawback to playing coy is it's harder to admire the scratched planes of his friend's nose and cheekbones. They were _fierce_ things. Almost as angular as a statue's. Ha, even a wolf couldn't ruin them. John steps around him, standing on his left so he can better leer at him with his good eye. Javier pretends not to notice, though it's getting more difficult to keep his mouth from curling. The man isn't drunk today. He knows not to touch him or nuzzle his hair, though it's clear he wants to.

"...Well." John eventually says with a shrug. "Could give it to Jack."

There are licorice chews and chocolates on the table right behind him, and he chooses a classic children's treat of _canned fish_. Certainly more than he's done this entire month, though he won't bring it up. Not with today going so smoothly. The ride to Valentine was brisk -- they'd raced, and Javier won, like he usually does -- and he's still riding the high. They move throughout the store in a careful dance of muttered comments, playful commentary and the occasional question to the storeowner. They leave with their list fully crossed off, and only half of them paid for.

"Behave yourself until we get to the river, John." He warns as he fills his satchels and double-checks for anything missing. "Don't knock my hat off."

"It was an accident." John chuckles, tucking on his hat and scratching Old Boy's mane. Javier hums softly.

"And I'll give you one custom-made, so watch it. I was nice enough to take you out today, so don't make me take you out, if you know what I'm saying?"

The man's eyes light up, at that. John Marston _might_ just be a little of a masochist. That would explain why he and Abigail are together, at least. Javier double-checks the saddlebags are properly tied before swinging a leg over Boaz and kicking his flanks. A very old song rises up in him, when his head was filled with thoughts not of fish and outlaws, but honey smiles and promises made in secret.

_no entiendo el sol_

_y el sol no me entiende_

_pero estoy aquí y esta ahí_

_y eso es eso_

_no entiendo mi chica_

_ella nunca quiere entenderme_

_estoy aquí y esta allí_

_y eso es eso_

"You gotta tell me what you're singin' one of these days." John says as he croons his way through the last few notes, meaningless sounds to celebrate the breeze with. Javier gives Boaz a tap on his flanks. Speeds him just just a few steps ahead.

"Maybe I'll teach you Spanish one of these days."

"I'd like that."

"You just want a private lesson, John. Don't get cute."

"Ha, maybe." John's eyes disappear from the brim of his hat as he hunches and laughs. "And maybe I want to learn Spanish, too."

He'll teach him plenty. Maybe not phrases he can use in polite company, but since when have they led polite lives? He considers teasing him a little, just to see that smile in the sunlight where it belongs...and feels his hackles raise when a trio trot in front of them on the road leading up out of the town, led by a man with piggy little eyes and ridiculously thick sideburns. He's flanked by two of who must be peers, judging by their dirty work pants and rolled-up sleeves. Their horses are of a heavier stock. Some sort of warmblood, and well tended to.

"...Fine day." Javier says, matter-of-factly, tugging on Boaz's reins when he tosses his head. He's a sensitive horse, even a little shy. He's already uncomfortable.

"You! You were with that man the other day, Sir Smith or _whatever_ his name was-"

Damn it. Sir Smith. Only Bill could come up with a name somehow _that_ generic and _that_ obtuse.

"You must have us confused for someone else-" John tries, one hand in the air. The man sneers.

"Nah, I saw _both_ of you leave with him." He points a finger at them, voice raised in some meager attempt to draw attention. They're too far out of the town's limits. If anyone decides to step in they'll have to come all the way up the hill. "You and some country bumpkin. I've got a sharp eye, see, livin' in a place always gettin' rustled and hustled. I know them's _your_ scars and _your_ filthy brown hide-"

"You watch your _goddamn_ mouth." John hisses. Old Boy huffs and stamps in place, the already temperamental creature feeding off his rider's anger.

"Shut the hell up, we'll get to _you_ next, scarface-" The one to the right scoffs. The leader hasn't turned away from him, though. Javier knows that look. He knows _exactly_ this look.

"That's a pretty fancy outfit you have, for a greaser." He sneers, right on cue. "You planning on part-timing at the bar?"

Javier chuckles, dryly. ...Ah. They want a fight. A fight they're ill-equipped to have, when they clearly just took their horses out of the stable. Javier rolls his neck slowly, not taking his eyes off them. Size isn't everything, but they seemed to have missed the memo. They all sit as high as they can in their saddle, shoulders squared back. Looking down their noses at him. Probably think they're atop a throne.

"Well." He responds, frowning and shrugging. "That depends if your sister is visiting or not." Javier snaps his fingers, as if in sudden thought. "Wait, you're not dating her already, are you?"

Pig Eyes looks taken aback for all of one second...then _growls_ , audibly, more like a cranky cat than an oversized hog. Javier glances surreptitiously to John beneath the brim of his hat. The man's had one hand on the reins the whole time, the other floating above his gun holster. Javier tilts his head to the left. _Just_ enough to tell him-

" _Get the hell back here!_ "

They bull right through them. The trio's horses whinny, bucking and swerving in an attempt not to get knocked over. To their credit they recover quickly, hoofbeats drumming into the air not three seconds after. Size _definitely_ isn't everything. Their horses are bigger, but Boaz is _much_ faster. He glides up the hills surrounding Valentine. Old Boy huffs just a few feet behind him. Javier leans forward and whispers encouragement in his ear. The closer they get to camp, the better. They won't lead them there, but the trees can provide cover-

"Javier!" John yells, voice coarse with shock. " _Watch out!_ "

Javier glances over his shoulder. He only sees the rope a second before it lands around his shoulders and yanks him off Boaz.

He hits the ground...and loses all the air in his body. He tries to suck in a breath, but he can't. An attempt to stand up is punished when his boots slip in the mud and send him crashing back down. A hoof whips past his head. They've lassoed him perfectly. The thick rope bites into his skin, crushes his windpipe, _burns_. Javier gags, _writhes_ , nails clawing his skin as he tries to burrow past his flesh and beneath the knot, anything for an inch of air, but it's so much heavier, so much _thicker_ than-

_"Mamá-"_

_"Javi-"_

-he scrabbles at the ground, but he can't feel the dirt. His fingers are numb, meaty growths, his arms buzzing strangely, head swelling like it's ready to pop. Black creeps into his vision in slow, ominous ink blots, then pops and scatters into rainbow when his head hits the ground again, voices twanging and roaring above his head in a cacophony he barely understands-

"You got 'im trussed up like cattle!"

"Javier! Get the _hell_ off him-"

"Get back, boy!"

_"Déjalo, déjalo, es mi único hijo-"_

_"Es un criminal, puta. Un criminal y un ladrón, no me tocas-"_

-they're dragging dragging dragging him through the mud to beat him or whip him in the square, Javier can't pull because he has no leverage and he can't call because he _can't breathe_ , his only option is to scrape nails on his boot but he can't feel the knife because he can't feel anything but he has to have faith it's there because John is still too far away and it's all he has-

_" **Mamá** -"_

"I'm taking you to the sheriff, he'll know _exactly_ what to do with-"

-his first swipe slides off, the second just passes through air, his world is black-

-then there's a gunshot and the rope goes slack and he's hitting the ground again, gasping and hacking and arching like a breached fish. His knife slips from his grasp and he automatically claws for it, crushes his fingers around the hilt and grimaces as sensation spikes through his palm, a belated reaction of pins and needles as blood returns to his limbs beat by brutal beat. Out of the corner of his eye he sees John with his gun out, eyes flared with rage and rearing up on his horse against the glare of the sun. He could have shot the man...but he shot the rope. To spare him even one more second of the pain. It's a realization as far off as the hills. Now that he can see again-

-it's just one man left.

"Greaser?" His voice is shredded, frayed apart into a thousand fuzzy strands, but proper fear blooms in the man's eyes. He understands him just fine. "... _Greaser?_ "

This man doesn't just look like a pig, but _squeals_ like one when Javier flings his knife and gets him in the back of his neck. His horse stalls, bucks at the scream, and it's enough time for him to run over, grab him and yank him bodily from his saddle. The comparison only becomes more apt when he yanks his boot knife out and slams it back into his face and throat and chest, again and again and again. Javier stops only to scowl at the state of his shoes. Then it hits him. Damn it! He staggers back to his feet, whirls toward the other two...but there's little more than a dust cloud left.

"... _Hijos de putas_." He hisses, and uselessly scuffs his stained heel against a patch of grass.

There are no new scars on John that he can see, but he's panting hard, body shaking with it. He must've struggled with one of them before they fled. There's a vivid splash of red on his left arm; whichever one he shot got hit good. It's almost as crimson as that undershirt he's always wearing. Javier only turns when the rancher on the ground gurgles, remaining good eye staring at nothing. Blood bubbles in the corner of his mouth. He'd stabbed, as Hosea might say, 'willy-nilly'. He's suffocating.

"Where are the others?" Javier rasps. John flicks his head over one shoulder.

"Shot one of them. Might've gotten the other, not sure. They hightailed it." He pauses at the sound of a gurgling, hiccuping cough. "...Let's get this over with." He pulls out his gun and reloading it. Javier shoves the barrel down.

"Save your bullet." He wrinkles his nose. "He's already dying."

"I ain't showin' sympathy for this _hick_." John spits on the ground, to punctuate it. "But there's no need to let him... _linger_ , like that."

"He would've done it to me." Javier reaches up and grabs him by the collar with one hand. "Would've done it to _you_ , too. You know what it's like, yeah?" He gives him a little shake. " _Yeah?_ "

John's scarred face twists with a snarl.

"Don't tell me what I have and haven't _been_ through!"

Javier's face flares with a growl of his own. His grip tightens. John puffs his hair out of his eyes, breath sharp and shallow. They stare each other down like two wild bulls. This is as close as his friend gets to mercy, and a part of him _almost_ admires it. Javier thumbs at the smudge of red he left on his shirt collar, then lets him go. He turns and whistles for Boaz. He's a loyal horse. One of the most loyal he's ever had. He hadn't wandered far and comes running right back, though he dances away from the corpse-to-be.

"Javier." He hears. Then a short pause. " _Javier._ "

He looks over his shoulder again at John, sliced into ribbons through the wet strands of his hair. The man's expression is still tense, but now a little wary...and confused. He flicks fingers at his collarbone.

"...Your neck."

His...neck? He... _saved_ his neck. Might not be breathing if not for that damn sharp eye of his. Javier squints in confusion, slowly reaches up to touch his throat...and startles at the coarse knot that greets his fingertips. ...The lasso is still there. He _yanks_ the rope off, flings it away. For a few cold seconds he stares at the curl of white on brown, the urge to pick up something sharp filling his fingers, even though the danger's passed. He reaches up and grips his neck, rubs it from side-to-side like twisting a bottle cap off, where the raw and abused skin is starting to split apart like whites from an orange. Again and again and again and again and again.

"We need to get out of here." John says, and he nods. He follows the groove in the ground from where he was dragged, plucks his hat off the ground and puts it on carefully.

It's a different sort of race back to camp. Boaz is fidgety, twitching and doubting every command given, lagging behind Old Boy by a few paces. He'd pet him, but the horse's fur is already stained enough. The man's horse is pulled between them; John stated it could either be given to one of the girls or sold, somewhere far from Valentine. A distant part of him feels surly he's not in the lead right now, but the world is moving at a very peculiar blur he's not sure he likes. It's hard to keep track of his thoughts. It's banjo banter. Pinging and random. Karen's blonde hair shines like a beacon through the trees, bored slouch perking up.

"Hey, good to see you boys!" She calls as they trot up the hill. "Nice to see you out and about, Marston." Then she takes one look at him and blinks. "...Good _lord._ What happened to you?"

Javier grins and spreads his arms wide.

"One of the locals confused me for a cow!" He wipes crusted blood off his cheek with the back of one hand. "So I confused him for a dartboard."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, I know! I'll split up already existing chapters so each one isn't quite so long and involving. My subconscious totally won't confuse them for one-shots and feel the need to pad them out with extra detail, right? I've been writing for a long time and this is a pattern I would know already! Right?
> 
> _Right?!_
> 
> but seriously, I'm having fun writing this and it's nice to go with the flow, even if the flow means extra work sometimes lmao


	3. sol

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Inspiration: "Breve Descripción De Mi Persona" by El Cuarteto De Nos
> 
> Trigger warning for explorations of severe depression, depictions of self-harm and dissociation/questioning of reality. 

*

  _pero no soy tan complicado como para huir_

_ni quedarme aquí en silencio_

_pero no soy tan simple como para no advertir_

_que no hay tres minutos_

_ni hay cien palabras_

_que me puedan definir_

*

"It would've been pretty smooth, really, if a _very_ special senior member of the gang hadn't taken great care to fuck things up. I told him to let John do the talking. He wouldn't have it! He is _always_ like this. Hasn't changed since I first-"

"We all make mistakes, Javier. I made one of the _biggest_ with Blackwater, but we're still here, and _that's_ what matters."

Ay, around and around and around they _go_. Molly leans her long nose deeper into her book, even though she hasn't turned the page this entire time. Sometimes he wonders if she's a girlfriend or furniture. Dutch crosses one leg over the other, narrows his eyes and leans his chin up. His sign that his patience is wearing out. Javier lets out an exasperated puff of laughter, holds up both stained hands in the air in a helpless shrug.

"What are you saying? I mean, there are mistakes, Dutch, and _then_ there's-"

"Stupidity, Javier?" Dutch murmurs, low as a wildcat growl and just as dangerous. "Is _that_ what you plan on saying?"

Javier's jaw clicks shut. He slowly lowers his hands. Stares at him through his hair. The air between them fills with a heavy silence, even as the camp hustles and murmurs without missing a beat. Dutch lets out a cloying puff through his nose (almost like the surly dragons in Jack's favorite stories, his mind whispers), then tugs out his cigar. He holds the stub right up to his face, waggling it like he's a kid.

"Bill is temperamental...yes. Foolish, sometimes. Angry?" He chuckles, low and dry. "Always. I don't fault _ambition_ , though, Javier. Especially not ambition for family's sake. So you and John got out of another scrape by the skin of your teeth. How is that any different from the _hundred_ you've been in before?" He takes another pull, the embers inside winking bright, and watches him through the cloud. "This isn't my first rodeo, Javier. I know you've got something else simmering in that sharp mind of yours. Whatever you need to say, _say_ it...or hold your peace."

There's plenty he's said. His concerns are simply brushed to one side with yet more platitudes about inner character or his lack of faith. Imagine! His conviction, his _belief_ , all just some flimsy thing. It's never been weak. How _could_ it, when he would have died so many times in the past without it? Dutch has always been protective of those under his care, and it wasn't an easy job being a leader with a vision shared equally among others, but...sometimes _too_ much compassion did more harm than good. These aren't easy things to think, much less sing, much less say, and Javier briefly wonders if Dutch can read all this on his face, anyway.

Right now he's staring at him with the very same piercing look that staggered him five years ago. Like he can see all of him, as he is now...and how he'll _be_. Javier twists his jaw. Feels an itch in his eyebrow, right where the cut splits the black into brown, and fights the urge to reach up and tug. Molly finally turns a page in her book.

"...All right." Javier nods his head, once, staring just over Dutch's shoulder. Not so far away that he can't see the man's shoulders relax.

"...All right, then." The cigar bobs one more time. "Now go clean yourself up. You're quite a sight."

Javier nods again, because that's what Dutch needs to see, and scratches at the blood caked on his face. Flicks the red scales into the air, pretends they're all his irritable sentiments on the matter, then slinks off to go wash his clothes.

He doesn't let Bill out of his sight.

He watches him through his hands as he scrubs off in a basin, from his face to the splatter that's stuck to his collarbone. As he tugs off his shoes, then pants. As he changes into his spare brown jeans, letting his bare torso dry in the warm summer air, wet hair sticking to his neck (and fingers constantly drifting to his brow to pluck). Bill carefully avoids his gaze all the while. He's hunched over one boot by one of the tables, dabbing at a hole with a glue brush. This lumbering _oaf_. Javier thinks how, in _all_ his time stomping a path into the dirt and trying to live another day, some truths have never been disproved. The sky is blue, God is good...and people without two common cents to rub together should know their damn _place_.

Javier wrings out his dress shirt carefully, flicks it out and stretches at the cotton with meticulous little tugs until the wrinkles surrender and fade. His bucket is more soupy than Pearson's stew. More dirt than blood, really, but...not by much. The scent of roses greets his nose, just a second before a soft, quavering voice that always puts his blood at ease.

"Need any help with that?" Tilly asks, stepping around his carefully arranged clothing pile with a basin of fresh water. Javier smiles.

"Ah, no, you've got your hands full." He wrings his shirt again and snaps it back out. Studies the way the water drips pink in the light. "This is also a pretty big stain."

"That it is." She kneels, minding her dress as she sets up the washboard. Her eyes, however, don't leave his face. "I heard about what happened today. Are...you okay? Karen said..."

She trails off, then beckons for him to rinse off the rest in her basin. Javier obliges, leaning over and dipping it in gently, careful not to splash her.

Yes, he's _quite_ sure Karen said a thing or two. This wasn't a woman easily startled, but he's been on the receiving end of a very keen stare since he got back. At least he picked a good time to get attacked. Today is laundry day for many. Arthur returned not an hour later after scouting out a new camp with Charles; they were both covered head-to-toe in dirt from a skirmish that, thankfully, swung in their favor. Damn Pinkertons just had to show their rat faces down by the river. Now the lot of them are forced to leave hardly a month after coming down the mountain. It's a shame, but it is what it is. Javier gives Tilly another smile, this time with a wink, and enjoys the way she ducks her head and hastily fights at some stain on her wet dress.

Pearson, who seemed to take a _personal_ offense to the concept of baths, is wearing a different outfit for once as his clothes dry on the line. Even Mary-Beth, who normally spends most of her time with her nose in a book, slipped and fell in a puddle while trying to scam a man in Valentine. Right now Jack is trotting back-and-forth tirelessly on tiny errands, excited by this unusual lining up of everybody's chores. Ha, to his young mind it must seem like a very strange, very _clean_ party. It's not long before he comes up to them, arms swinging in an eager metronome.

"Javier, do you need help with laundry?" He bounces once, twice. "Hi, Miss Tilly."

Javier studies him, hands caught in an automatic pattern of twisting and flicking. Good lord. Had he _ever_ been this small? He spends so much time thinking of his days in the desert, yet right now it all seems so very, _very_ far away.

"Sure." He sets the shirt on the rim and rinses the rest of the soap from his hands. "We got any room on the lines left?"

"Uh-huh." Jack is happily breathless, cheeks spotted pink from the exertion. "Susan told me to get _all_ the wet clothes and hang them up!"

"Well, then." He gives his shirt one last twist and holds it up to the light. Looking good. "Why don't you go hang this one up for me? Oh, and use these..." He hands him the wrapped clothespins he designed specifically to reduce wrinkles. "Okay?"

Jack's bright eyes glow all the brighter, fascinated by his task and the tools. Tilly hands her red shawl over.

"Mind hanging this one up for me, too?"

"Nope! I mean, yes, I _wanna_ hang it up." He bundles them up in his arms, so small they already risk trailing in the grass. "Your clothes are my favorite, Miss Tilly."

Tilly hunches her shoulders and laughs sweetly. Javier claps a hand over his heart. "Ay, you're breaking my heart, little man!"

Jack squeaks an apology, _far_ too polite for his age. Javier watches him scamper across the camp, a slow, unconscious smile spreading on his face. Such a sweet and soft boy, still, despite such a vicious world. Just like Gabriela. He soaps up the water more, blurs it a little. It stops reflecting the sky's orange clouds, reveals instead a weathered, carefully groomed man in his twenties. A revolutionary who could no longer help his country, an outlaw feared and loathed in his old home and his new. Again he reaches up and touches his face, tapping wet fingertips from wrinkle to scar. ...Would she recognize him?

"What're you thinking about?"

Tilly's finished with one dress. Now she's scrubbing her stockings up and down the washboard in pleasing repetitions. Like hoofbeats up his spine. Javier hums to it.

"This and that. Times long past." He spins a hand in the air. "This...summer air, the heat, it all gets in my head. You?"

"Nothing quite as nostalgic." Another bouncing rattle. "Susan never gets off my case about _chores_ enough for it to be nostalgic."

Javier chuckles. Tilly does, too, in spite of herself. He looks back to his basin, smooths his brow back into place. Drifts fingers over the scar and tilts his head. Admires it. It's a fine looking thing, really. The last gift Garrett gave him before getting a knife to the gut and a permanent departure from the gang's good graces. The sun presses hot against his neck, one final hurrah before night arrives, and he sinks into memory.

Garrett had been in the gang far longer than he had, at the time. Javier had been hardly six months out of Mexico. Just _three_ under Dutch. That man's betrayal had been a... _powerful_ sort of initiation, surprising even with the knowledge of who Javier was and where he came from. Dutch and Hosea learned he'd fled his country for killing a man. Even with his limited English they understood when he'd acted it out in front of the campfire. As perfectly as if there was no barrier at all. They saw the pain on his face. What it all _meant_ to him. Nobody had judged him for it. He knew this band of killers and thieves _wouldn't_ , or he wouldn't have spilled a single bean.

The world is full of killers. Some cowards, some heroes. What made the Van der Lindes family weren't their explosive escapades, but the little things. Tilly helping him pick out (steal) one of his very favorite jackets, a blue blazer he's taken great care of ever since. John inviting him to shoot bottles when he noticed how he lingered away from group gatherings. Garrett teaching him how to play Texas Holdem one drunk, rowdy night.

Ay, that first month...it had been his first taste of true kindness in America, and it had nearly _finished_ him.

Javier's scars pronounced themselves suddenly and without mercy. Wide-awake nightmares. Outbursts of anger he couldn't control, couldn't smother into obedience. Then came the days where he felt nothing at _all_ , what frightened him even more than the rage. Where he'd react to nothing and look forward to nothing and dream of nothing, nowhere, _no one_. Arthur had been the most cautious around him when he got like this, all too aware of the fury that bubbled beneath the blank expression and one-word answers. Yes, that man _knew_ temper. Javier is both ashamed and grateful, thinking about how Arthur had to pin him down more than once during those days.

The... _emptiness_ , though. Never does he want to go back to that. He would rather die than become living stone again.

English is an unforgiving language. The tongue of madness. Javier learned the hard way what locals thought of him once he opened his mouth, and he became a _very_ dedicated pupil of Hosea's. He woke early, made the man breakfast, even begged for ten more minutes of study, that lovely, musical repetition of words and cadence that made him feel less crazy. He'd hoped these insane words could give voice to his _own_ insanity. He'd worked hard, yes, and to this day he's proud of his capabilities, but even _he'd_ grown tired sometimes. Cards had been much easier to learn. Their words? Paper and chips. The grammar? Furtive glances over closed hands. Boastful smiles, simple enough threats.

Garrett had been an exiled bartender (a curious enough title on its own) and a _proud_ conman. Poker was in his blood, a skill said to have been passed down from his parents and grandparents. He never went easy on him -- Javier hadn't wanted it -- and the activity had quickly become one of his _very_ favorites. Twice a week, always in the evening or late night hours. Often with beer, sometimes not. Uncle _always_ was down for a round, despite betting the least. So was John. The laughter, the taunts...it was a sedative. A drug. Even the way they bantered filled in the gaps left by Hosea's dutiful yet inorganic tutelage. Javier still couldn't say much, but he would watch and listen happily. Shuffle his cards and affect dignity when pressed, newly proud of his dead expression in a way he hadn't been before.

When Garrett betrayed the gang and got Dutch jailed, something in Javier...cracked.

Boaz has always been one of the fastest horses he's ever ridden. He had been the first to catch up with Garrett after he fled, and the one to end his life. The chase lasted only a few minutes. When Javier knocked him from his horse, pinned him down in the dirt, the man had _pleaded_. Begged, in a way that transcended all languages. When they fell on deaf ears he struck him in the face with a rock. It could have taken out his eye, if he'd had _any_ sort of aim to his name. He'd been an incredible poker player, a decent enough thief, but that was _just_ his skill. He'd pulled the wool over their eyes. Drank with them. Killed with them.

Fooled them.

Maybe _that_ would have been fine, even! Forgiveness is a holy gesture, an act of great strength, and redemption can be earned. But young Javier had seen Dutch behind bars. _His_ Dutch. He'd heard he was headed for the noose, this generous and philosophical man who brought him back from the brink of forever. There hadn't been a question in his mind, and he returned to the camp with blood on his face and his cargo in tow.

Later he learned, when English had finally been corralled (if not _quite_ tamed) that Garrett had been captured and tortured into a confession. At least, that had been _his_ story, but Hosea believed him. When Dutch was broken out of jail -- a complicated heist pulled off by Arthur and Bill -- he had been furious at him for a _week_. It was a confusing time. ...A terrifying one. He'd been early enough into the gang to wonder if he'd lose another home so soon, but established enough to be in limbo. He remembers Tilly letting him lay his head in her lap beneath the overhang of her tent. A young man had become a boy, lost all over again.

The stone had cracked. For the first time since he joined the gang...he'd wept.

"...Why are you looking at me like that?"

Tilly is reaching around her braids to pull out her barrette. Smiling, a little self-consciously, a touch warily. In a sort of limbo herself. Javier realizes, belatedly, his hand is still on his brow. A heavy-footed presence jolts him back across the border. He drops his hand and looks over his shoulder at Bill. Watches him dunk one of his filthy flannel tops into the basin opposite him with a slow, ugly knot winding in his stomach.

"...So. What _did_ that rancher promise you, anyway?" He asks, leaning back and flicking soap suds off his hands. When the man doesn't respond -- dunking his shirt in and out like he's trying to drown someone -- he puts a smile in his voice. "Come on, Big Bill. Share your secrets."

"...Shut up." Bill mutters, scrubbing his shirt with more force than necessary. "It turned sour, all right? Get off my goddamn back."

"No..." Javier rubs his chin, slowly, and rises to his feet. "No, I don't think I will. See..."

Bill stiffens when he claps a hand on his bad shoulder. The one where he got shot twice not long after being booted out of the army and _always_ tried to pass off as a battle scar from some noble war that never happened. He growls under his breath, tries to rise. Javier shoves him back down.

"I'm still kind of...what's the word?" He slides his fingers to the crook of his neck, where the abused muscles become a little more sensitive...and squeezes _hard_. "Peeved, is it?"

"Agh, _damn it-_ " Bill hisses, twisting fruitlessly. His hands ball into fists...but he doesn't swing them. That's good. _Very_ good. He still hasn't made his point yet. Javier looks over his shoulder.

"Tilly." He bobs his head at her, curled low over her handiwork and watching them both warily. "What's that word? When you're _kind_ of irritated, but it isn't that big of a deal?"

"...Peeved, like you said." She delicately picks a blade of grass off her shirt and flicks it away, looking back down. "Miffed, I suppose."

Javier snaps his fingers.

" _Ah!_ Miffed. I like that." He turns back around, leans down to better grind the heel of his thumb into that old wound, where the shrapnel still rested. Bill squirms and twists on the ground like a child, a whine in the back of his throat so high and so faint only he can hear. "I'm still a little _miffed_ , Bill, on how a good thing turned out to be such a _mess_." He drops his voice low. Not quite a whisper. "Why are you such a mess, hm? Why can't you do anything right?"

"Piss _off_ , we can always rustle more sheep-" Bill wheezes, face starting to turn a satisfying shade of pink. His fists tremble with warning. Javier is more than happy to let him land the first blow. He'll land a _dozen_ more. Maybe keep a tooth and drop it in his coffee later as a reminder.

"But I only have one _neck_ , Bill. You only have one neck. John only has one _neck_ , huh?" Javier leans his chin up and points one finger at the rope burns from earlier, still glowing an angry red. "You think I got spares, Bill? I keep a few extra necks in my back pocket?"

"Get _off_ -" He wheezes, face cherry red and a little blue. Javier's grip tightens and the man cries out, sharp and high.

"I _asked-_ "

"Javier."

Javier turns and looks at Tilly. She flicks her eyes to one side, then back, brows furrowed. He narrows his eyes, then follows her gaze, past Bill's head and down to Jack. He hadn't heard the boy approach. He's wringing his hands, still shiny and damp from carrying the gang's laundry.

"Are you fighting?" He asks, quietly. Then he startles when Bill lets out an angry, pained snort. The man tries to yank away, for a third time. Javier lets go. He lurches to his feet and storms off, leaving his shirt behind.

"...Hey." Javier rubs at his neck. Smiles. "No, of course not. Just playing." He leans back and calls out, "Right, Bill?"

"Go to _hell_ , Javier!"

"See?" He scratches, scratches and scratches, and feels warmth bloom beneath his nails. "Sore loser. Don't be like him, conejito."

_Ay_ , his voice is still rough from that damn rope. His usual gentle, hoarse notes are gone, stamped out. For a one cold, panicked second he wonders if he'll even _sing_ the same, after this. Jack twists tiny fingers together in the face of his silence. Big blue eyes flicking up, then down...then up. Javier rubs his throat, stares at that soft, innocent face. That naivete will do him no favors. None of this should stun him. Maybe he was the father, maybe he _wasn't_ , but this sheltering couldn't be wise. Well. Now's always the perfect time to start. Javier lowers to a crouch in front of the boy, tugs out the knife at his hip and hands it to him, hilt first.

"Go on." Javier bounces it. "It won't bite, unless you let it."

Jack blinks, looks to Tilly, then around for his mother, no doubt. He twists his fingers. Reaches out and takes it gingerly with one hand.

"Fear is a good thing, Jack. But you can't let it boss you around, hm? You're young now, but you'll have to learn how to use different tools to stay safe. To keep others safe." He reaches over and traces a finger around the edge of the knife, up to the tip. "For now...you know what you do to anyone who belittles you?"

"What?"

" _Fillet_ them."

Jack blinks, slowly, brow furrowing into a delicate little wrinkle. He's never looked more like a baby rabbit than he does now.

"What's going on?"

Javier blinks through the sudden dark, looking up at the burly shadow that's appeared behind Jack. Arthur's chin is raised in consideration, eyes narrowed down at him. Not unlike Dutch. They drift down to Tilly, then up and over to Bill, then back to him. He slowly rests a hand on the boy's head.

"Oh, nothing much." Javier tips an invisible hat with a smile. He plucks the knife from Jack's hands and sticks it back in its holster. "Just teaching the boy a few things."

Arthur cocks an eyebrow.

"By damn near making him cut himself? Go back to laundry and leave the parenting to the parents."

He steers Jack away, muttering down to him that there's firewood that needs gathering. Tilly picks up her basin and moves back over to where the girls are sitting and talking over needlework. Soon he's alone. Javier ignores the strange sensation in his chest, returns to squeezing and scraping hints of blood out of his corduroy vest. Eh. It's for the best. This isn't a mood he should be sharing with the rest of the camp (except Micah, perhaps). When he looks up again a few minutes later, blinks through the early evening sunlight falling over camp, he catches John's gaze. Stiff and alert, like a deer peering over the safe cover of a bush.

Then he looks away. Scrubs at his nose, scratches at his cheek, focused on washing that duster he's worn for nearly three years now. Javier watches John double-check both coat and vest, swaying in one of the trees instead of a line. His jeans look as terrible as ever. His own didn't need much of anything. There's a reason he _always_ wears dark ones. Blood splatter on a shirt collar is _one_ thing, but no respectable outfit can truly come together with filthy pants.

' _Yet somehow you manage_.' He thinks fondly, watching the hypnotic dip and rise of John's back as he scrubs a losing battle. ' _Beyond me_.'

*

The evening gets chilly and wet, though he welcomes it after that wretched blizzard. It'll rain in a day or two. Javier dresses down in his loose white tunic, brushes his hair and loses himself in an evening dream of music by the fire and a little liquor. That'll be for another time, though. John is yawning widely when he finds him at his post later that night, rifle slack in both hands. His stance is alert, as it so always is, but it's hard to resist. It often is with him.

"Don't drop it, John." Javier says as he approaches, stepping loudly enough not to startle. "It's not a newspaper."

The cheer in his voice is rough. He doesn't care. John shouldn't be out on watch. He should be _sleeping_ , resting off the rest of that mountain's bad luck. Karen has been picking up his slack since he was bedridden, though, and John has made it quite clear how guilty he feels to anyone with ears. Arthur does enough during the day that he hasn't had to stand guard in probably years and Micah, mm...few here trust that man as far as they can _throw_ him. He's always liked that saying. It's a perfect visual for what he wouldn't mind doing to that man, right off the edge of a steep cliff.

"It's fine." John mutters. "Besides, maybe it'll..." He cuts off, stifles another yawn, almost grimacing with the need of it. "...maybe it'll help me finally fall asleep." A soft, persistent scratching follows. "...Stay asleep."

"You know what would help you fall asleep, amigo?" Javier throws an arm around his shoulders. "Going to _bed_."

John shrugs his arm off sharply. Javier raises his eyebrows. Stares at what little he can pick out in the falling light. His rifle is in one hand now, brows furrowing down low in thought.

"Javier."

"What?"

"...You need to quit tryin' to pick fights." He leans off into the shadow and spits. "It's stupid, but it's over. Let it rest."

Javier doesn't say anything at first. Chews on the silence, grinds it in his teeth, trying to soften it away from the cutting he can do so easily. The low _snap_ of a twig makes them both turn. John raises his rifle to eye level, but it's just some animal, already scurrying a retreat through dead leaves.

"...Yeah, and when it happens again?" Javier asks, turning back around and pushing his hands into his pockets. "What then, huh? We face the fallback for when Bill goes and pisses off an entire _train_ because he thinks because he can walk like Dutch he can _talk_ like Dutch?" John lets out a sound like he couldn't _be_ more annoyed, which rankles Javier into leaning into his space. "We're quite a lot to deal with, here, but I'm really at a loss on what you're getting at."

"Look...maybe it _will_ , all right?" John tries to focus, glances over his shoulder at the land beyond, expression nothing but hard lines and heavy shadows. "I ain't defendin' Bill. He's a jackass. Things are just tough right now, though-" God, he sounds a lot like his father sometimes, just out-of-the-blue- "-and in-fightin' ain't helpin' _no_ one."

"Is it? _Is_ it in-fighting?" Javier points a finger to himself. "You think I'm some boogeyman? Some sour-faced bully like Bill, like Micah? I'm looking out for _myself_."

"Then what the _hell_ did _I_ do?"

Javier leans back from the look on John's face. He's staring at him like he did on Old Boy, when he had one fist in the man's vest and a thousand violent outcomes on his mind. His mind buzzes uncomfortably. It's the sensation of leaping off a horse, maybe jumping from rock to rock across a river, where the outcome is suddenly uncertain. Potentially disastrous.

"...You saved me, is what you did." Javier answers, softly. "You saved my life."

When John just shakes his head, loses the hard edges to his face in favor of something worse, he sticks the landing. It thrums through him. The shock of impact through all four limbs and right up to his face, tight with a sudden shame. Anger is a weapon...and it seems his aim has gotten sloppy. That doesn't make much _sense_ , when he lived life meticulously, but that's what it seems to be, and his footing is staggered now, clumsily trying to follow after the tension and hurt in John's words. What's left of the evening sun is bringing out the red in his scars. The fading green from his bruises and scrapes. Then John's eyes hold his gaze fast once more.

"You're one of the toughest sons-of-bitches we got. We _need_ you. I...you've been..." He trails off, presses his lips together in frustration. Javier tilts his head. Something in his gut is stirring, terse and cold. This man has never been one to mince words. "...I'm worried, is all."

"...All right, John. Okay." Javier holds up his hands in surrender, tries a smile. "You got me. I'll be nicer."

"Tch. Bullshit. That ain't what I'm sayin' and you know it." John squints, tracking him for some tell. His voice softens, though. From bramble to stubble. "You're always tryin' to pick a fight."

No. That isn't true. That can't be. He's _tired_ of fighting, he fights so he can _stop_ fighting. That can't be true...can it? Javier settles one hand on the barrel of his rifle, lowers it a little so he can lean in and breathe John in. The man's finally bathed, his usual scent of sweat musky instead of sour. Tobacco clings to his hair. A second breath he finds that herb soap Hosea always buys. A third breath, weed. The rifle presses cold between their chests as he warms the cold tip of his nose in John's neck.

"I'm not fighting now." He says. John's heart speeds up sweetly. He huffs against his cheek.

"Guess not."

"Hey, no, no, no. None of that strong, silent type thing. Be honest with me." He wants to hug him, but some part of him is prickling, sticking out sharp ends everywhere. "Talk to me. We can _always_ talk."

A twig snaps again, much louder, and is followed by another. Not an animal this time, but the good Reverend, wandering off down the hill to go puke up his drink. John's hand drifts up to hook a thumb in his belt loop.

"You're...always lookin' out for us. For me." He abandons the rifle, slipping it down to set it against the tree behind him. "You went right up that mountain without even knowin' I was breathin' or not..."

Javier blinks, slowly. What... _is_ this? He shakes his head.

"You already thanked me."

"Ain't enough."

John cups his chin and kisses him. Firm, affectionate, the kind that would make someone more naive weak in the knees. Javier doesn't move, watching him with a quiet horror. This man didn't think so much of his life. Strange how some people truly felt this way, in spite of so _much_ evidence otherwise. Being rescued several times over the course of his life, being valued so clearly by his family, none of it has changed that. There's no tender transition here. No bridge to a hook. The realization spikes in a furious rejection, and when John kisses his mouth again Javier _bites_.

" _Mm-_ " John yanks away, an automatic hand slapping on his stomach. "Watch it-"

" _Enough_ of that." Javier hisses. Now _he_ takes John's chin, tugs him close and forces him to look him in the eye. "Wolves won't take you from me. Those men won't take you from me. _You_ won't take you from me, hm?"

John's scrubbing a fist over his mouth, eyes still flared with shock. Javier pushes his hand away, crushes their mouths together, bites again, this time hard enough to draw blood. The man's complaint is a mangled sigh. He doesn't pull away, even as the kiss turns bruising and slick. Giving into that pain he should mind a lot more and _doesn't_.

"...All right. Okay." John sighs, pulling back for breath, tonguing the new cut there. He trickles fingers down his sides to slip both hands into his back pockets. "...Shame we couldn't go fishin'."

From a little wary to a little fond. Just how he wants to hear. Javier's hackles go down, but only just.

"So am I, but don't change the subject. I don't want to hear you put yourself down like that. _Ever_. Okay?" John's laugh is whisper thin. Just shy of nervous, still fond.

"You're gettin' a little crazy on me, Javier."

Yes...he gets like this sometimes. Acts a little crazy, thinks crazy thoughts. Javier hums a little on reflex, tries to shake some sense into his head because it's been nothing but banjo banter ever since he hopped off Boaz and confronted Dutch covered in a rancher's dying minutes. John's hands haven't left his back pockets, pawing now like a kneading cat. Even as Javier nibbles more gently, burrs his affection between kisses, it doesn't leave, this... _carnal_ desire to carve his name into the man's skin and watch it close over the days. To claw hatches on his back.

So many called John an impulsive fool. They had to get to know him better to see how gentle and focused he _could_ be. Abigail must know this, or else she wouldn't have stuck around so long. Right now his friend's breathing is quick; just as shallow as earlier today, but with a better kind of tension. Wholly focused on him. Darkness bleeds through the trees, the sun dropping as quickly as an overripe fruit. Javier sighs. John tenses at that, physically reacting to something he did wrong, but it's not him. The evening may be romantic, yes, but he wants to _see_ him. Ah, well.

Javier reaches around John's wide shoulders to splay a hand on the back of his head and push his face against the spot right beneath his ear.

"Bite."

He does. Javier hisses with satisfaction, grins when John impatiently tugs his hair out of the way, bulls his nose past, breath hotter than a coal. It still makes him a little weak in the knees, this man's passion and how it takes hardly more than a touch to spark him blazing.

"Harder."

John obeys. Bites like an attack, burrows nails through the cotton of his shirt. Sucks, suckles, drawing out the bruise like he's trying to drink him dry. Javier's mouth hovers open, hangs there, breath shallow and fitful.

" _Harder_."

John hesitates. It's that precious half-second he treasures as much as the hot throb of pain that comes right after: that his friend can hurt _so_ easily, but he _loves_ him, even if he'd never surrender the phrase outright. Torn between a protective love and the love of a few perfect minutes.

John pushes him up against the tree. Leans hard against him when he tries to push back, burrowing his face where he's bleeding and lapping it up with hot, sloppy strokes. Javier nips at his ear, scrapes a little too hard, and receives a warning hiss he ignores. He's riding the crest of his crazy high, eager to test this man's boundaries and tug out the thorns beneath that snaggle softness. Then his breath ghosts over the frayed damage around his neck. That rubbed raw flesh still peeling and still burning. Burning. Burning. Burning. Burning-

"Javier."

John's nose and lips are crushed against his cheek. He murmurs his name in-between dragging kisses, lost in him and still sensing something amiss, hound nose that he is. A terrifying spike of anger rises through Javier's chest, entirely unexplainable, and it's like they're young men again, ducking behind the sweltering side of a house during a summer midday to claw and kiss at each other after too much time avoiding the thing. Does he remember what happened? Does he remember what he did under that tree? He does, because when Javier bites him again, this time with the sole intent to _hurt_ , he doesn't curse or shove him away.

"Javier." John whispers against his ear, voice tight with pain and still so soft he _hates_ it. "Hey. Hey."

He presses both hands beside his head, drapes over him like a blanket, still grinding his hips. Rough through their jeans, too rough. So _perfect_. Javier hisses angry little breaths, petulant to his own ears, ruined voice squeezing out between his teeth and John's bruised flesh, and it softens when John curves his hips, rolls against him again. This song he knows. This song they've sung before. That spike of rage crests, curves, crashes back down. He pulls off his skin, licks away at the blood that's swelled hot there, face no doubt smudged for the second time today. He rolls his hips back.

Each thrust hits clumsy. Hits lovely. _Why_ was he so angry? He doesn't remember. This is why they're all so worried. This is why. He's losing his head. John's breath is a ragged play against his lips, nose scraping clumsily as he seeks out the rest of his violence, but Javier has run dry. He licks into his mouth, coppery and sweet, then angles his head up to better suck on that scar dividing John's upper lip. The man's breaths catch and release on aborted words.

"Sometimes...I can't tell if you hate me...or not." John rasps, clicking open his belt and tugging at his. "That's all. That's all I wanted to say."

Javier _curses_ himself. Swallows down a groan at the last second and feels it vibrate through John's overly hot skin. They're already teetering on the edge when they finally press skin-to-skin. Maybe he's not stone, but he's the _other_ extreme. Love and hate, oh, they could be so _similar_. He's trying to come to a useful conclusion, so he can stop dragging John into these violent retreats under the black of night, have him thinking the wrong things, but it's impossible. John grips him, tugs, _squeezes_ , and heat knots in the pit of his stomach, sparking hotter and hotter and hotter.

"You've got it all wrong. You know I love you, right?" Javier whispers, unable to breathe, and loving it. "I've _always_ loved you."

John doesn't hear this enough, because that's what tilts him over the edge, huffing and panting into his hair like he can't breathe, either.

They lay against each other, swathed in the sudden silence that buzzes as loud as a guitar string. John is so exhausted he's vibrating like a string, too. Javier blinks the false lights away, turns and kisses his hair. Tells him to get some rest. John mumbles, incoherent as he always is after release. Dead leaves and twigs snap and crackle again. Javier lays his chin on John's head and watches Reverend amble his way back up the slope.

"Infidelity is a _sin_ , Mr. Marston."

John snorts. He shifts up onto his elbows.

"We ain't married, Reverend. Last I checked _you_ ain't either."

Ay, their poor, haggard priest. What a lot he fell in with, if redemption was truly his calling. Javier hums softly under his breath as he tucks John away again, buckling his belt and adjusting his suspenders where they threaten to slip. Reverend (and Sean and Micah and a _thousand_ more) have taken _great_ care to detail Javier's sins. The ones they presumed they knew about, anyway. John plays with his hair a little. He always liked it when he wore it down. He doesn't feel quite so crazy now.

"Sorry for giving you more laundry." He murmurs, half-asleep already. Javier gives him a gentle push. His shirt is stained, but it's nothing another scrub can't fix.

"There's _always_ more laundry. Go to bed."

"Fine."

John retreats to his empty, oversized tent. The stars wink happily. Tonight's going to be a peaceful one. He just feels it. Javier hums as he tugs on his jacket and ties his hair back. Uncle bugs him for a performance as he digs around for his rifle.

"No songs tonight."

At least, none out loud. Javier keeps humming as he wanders the hill surrounding camp and finds himself a spot in-between two trees, little more than another thin shadow among many to any prying eyes. It's not that he doesn't _have_ any. He's always had too many.

He just doesn't know if he'll like what he hears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I remember when I was a tween living in Idaho...I was at a friend's house, playing in her room and gushing over anime boys when her uncle came in and went off on some strange tangent. Wouldn't be much of a big deal, if he hadn't also waved a knife in my face. I don't remember what he was talking about, but I _do_ remember it scaring me quite a bit. I found out later said friend's mother was _furious_. She didn't let him visit for some time. It was also the last I ever saw him in person. Funny thing is, I wasn't consciously thinking of this when I wrote this chapter. Our subconscious is quaint like that.
> 
> There's also a callback line from the first Red Dead Redemption in here. Shout-out to whoever catches it!


	4. y

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Inspiration: "Falling" by Xangel
> 
> Trigger warning for dissociation, sexual harassment, discussions of childhood trauma/grief, suicidal ideation and a violent episode.

_*_

_why do i feel like falling_

_why do i feel so anxious_

_why do i feel so hopeless_

_why do i feel so old_

_why can't i just breathe?_

*

A little bit of hustle. A dash of bustle. A sprinkle of melancholy, stirred right in with the type of bittersweet affection that comes from a good home. Javier closes his eyes as the wind stirs up his poncho and sends it billowing. He calls long and smooth, a wolf safe in its pack, and tries to keep his composure when Cain calls back in a rowdy bay. Then he just gives in, chuckling heartily over the melody. It's a five-finger fillet of the sing-song type, spontaneous rollicking love spun fever frenzied as sleeping bags are rolled and caravans are filled.

_adios, días, dios, adios_

_montañas y césped y ríos y todos_

_adios, días, dios, adios_

_adios, queridos_

_hasta luego, nuestro lugar que viene, nos vemos_

A smatter of applause springs from the girls' caravans, not nearly sharp enough to startle him; Mary-Beth, Karen and Tilly are all delighted by his new piece, slapdash though it is, and they hardly lose their enthusism even when barked at to get back to work. Javier grins, strikes a pose when another breeze hits, perfect for a photo (if anyone had the time). It's a little silly, perhaps, but deserved! He sings for his family. He sings for the place. It's time to go, but a proper farewell is due. He'd finished his tasks ahead of schedule -- accepting Susan's sour expressions with pride when he took a well-deserved cigarette break -- and now lets his notes carry with a full heart. It's good for morale, anyway.

' _Squint all you like,_ ' He thinks as he hits another high note. ' _You like it._ '

It's a smooth journey to Clemens Point. Not so much as a loose wheel or stray bullet to rattle their good spirits. Uncle urges him to keep practicing with them, starting up a song with the girls that soon carries over from the first caravan to the last. They start off with a bar ditty, then shifting over to a silly rhyme-and-dance that has Mary-Beth trying (and failing) to dance atop one of the boxes. Arthur is the first to greet them when they pull up, ushering them in with pride he can't quite hide.

"Well, I don't know where the hell we are..." Dutch crows, cigar already in hand. "...But we are going to make the _most_ of it."

And they do.

They set up camp in record time -- even Uncle helping out -- and enjoy the early afternoon by the river with a lunch of fresh fish, courtesy of Hosea. He would have gone with him and Dutch, but there's always rich folk that need robbing and stories that need verifying. Javier compliments him on his catch, though takes care to remind him a _little_ more seasoning would have brought out the bluegill's texture. Hosea waves him off, but it doesn't make him any less _wrong_. Sometimes it seemed like only he and Susan appreciated a little extra fire to a dish.

When he's done he washes his plate and enjoys the feel of the sun on his face by the shore. There's work to be done, but, ah, these dusty summer days are _addictive_. Uncle is sleeping under a tree, bottles framing him like a sloppy shrine. Kieren and Lenny are teaching Jack how to skip stones across the water, pulling from a small stockpile next to their feet. Molly sits atop a (very clean) rock and slowly picks through her fish from a white china plate, last to finish as she ever is. Javier smiles to himself. So it hasn't broken, yet.

"You should work under Pearson. Replace him, maybe." She demurs when she spots his gaze. Javier snorts.

"Ay, not a chance. I got enough on my plate as it is." He cocks an eyebrow, then, and is pleased when Molly laughs prettily.

It might be wise to tuck in early, but it's simply too _lovely_ out. It's the kind of day that should be bottled and jealously kept. It's not long before he's gifted a distraction; little Jack has grown bored with his game, wandering over to him for something else to do. His pockets jangle with stones and no doubt sticks or other some such treasures. Javier tells him to wipe the mud from his feet off on the grass, then lets him sit on his leg. As the boy babbles for song lessons he reminds himself to thank Charles and Arthur for this spot. The beautiful river, the shade from the trees, the spread of escape routes...it's practically carved out for them.

"Ahh. Like this, from your stomach. Think of it like gathering up all your strength. _Ahh_."

" _Ahh_."

"There you go, see? You're getting it."

Jack's chubby cheeks stretch with a smile, oblivious to his mother leering moodily further down the shore. Abigail isn't all too happy her boy has skipped out on reading lessons for singing practice, but kids do that. They decide they want to be schooled by an aunt or an uncle instead, for a time, until they grow sick of _them_ and go right back to their parent. At least he wasn't waxing poetic about wanting to become a gunslinger. Ay, children's imaginations! Not that he could claim much different, at that age.

"Now, sing with me." Javier lets his voice carry like a bird's trill, sweet and simple. "Había una vez hubo un niño quien quise volar..."

"I un...nee-nyo _ken_..." He tries, then scrunches up his nose. "How do you remember all those words?"

"Lots of practice." Javier gives him a fond shake. " _Lots_ of practice."

The little boy's face falls. Ah, _there's_ that magic word.

"Okay. Can you teach me to practice guitar, please?" He asks, bobbing his feet. Javier rests a hand on his back to keep him from toppling over his knee.

"It's bigger than you, conejito."

"I'm strong. I can carry it."

Ha! Shy as this boy is, he's clearly learned some bravado from his father. The thought carries beyond him, a shadow appearing not a second later as if summoned. Javier wipes sweat from his brow with the back of one hand and looks up at Abigail, frowning down at him with her back against the sun. Her arms are folded, a tin cup of coffee tucked in the crook. She might bleed brown at this point. Is it even cold?

"...Jack, why don't you go play with Cain a bit?" She says, voice much lighter than her expression. Jack squirms unhappily.

"But Javier was gonna teach me to play guitar."

"I need to speak with him." She flicks her fingers toward the river. "Go on. He'll teach you later."

The boy pouts a little, but he obediently hops off his lap and disappears over the hill to search for the dog. Javier takes advantage of his absence to light an overdue cigarette. He watches the smoke float prettily in the light, then offers her a puff, which is turned down with another flick of the fingers. He shrugs, stomps out the match and waits for her to speak.

"What the hell were you doing giving my son a knife?" She starts without preamble. Ah. Arthur must've told her.

"Not to play with. To hold." Javier breathes out slowly, carefully. His muscles are aching more than usual; it could be an oncoming cold or just some extra strain from these hard, hard weeks. "You treat that boy like he's made of glass. Do that enough and the world will shatter him."

"That ain't _your_ decision to make, Javier. I don't want my son playing with guns _or_ knives."

Javier bears Abigail's hard stare calmly. He's never harbored ill will against her.

Even when she became jealous of him, treating him catty some days, like a stranger others. Mostly concerning the fact he didn't plan on taking a single lover until _much_ later in his life, when Dutch realized his dream, yet here he was, fooling around with her man too often to be casual. Not quite her husband, not quite her boyfriend. The only thing he was _sure_ of with John is that he's a friend he would die for. Anything more, he...doesn't know. He truly doesn't know. For some reason that scares him a little. It's a brief pop of fear -- one sour note on an otherwise confident melody -- and it disappears almost as soon as he feels it.

What was there to be afraid of? He's made peace with dying a bloody death and he's made peace with the fact he loves his family. If that love got a little blurry, a little foolish...that was fine. Good, even.

"He shouldn't have to know how to stab a man to get by. That's what we've had to do, but he has the chance for something else." She scoffs into her cup, the sound ringing tinny. "Not that he doesn't do his _best_ to turn out like his illiterate mother..."

Yes. He certainly _wants_ to feel that way. The line between dreaming and lying is a very fuzzy one, and he considers it more carefully. Summer heat is settling in him again, carrying his thoughts every which way. Abigail probably still asks herself whose son Jack is. The boy could be his. They've lived peacefully, or relatively so, with this knowledge. It doesn't _feel_ like things are changing between them...but things have changed so much lately he'd be lying if he said he was keeping track of it all.

It would be easy to retreat under the easy cover of physical resemblance, but an old memory springs into view, promptly chiding him. Of a cousin on his father's side: Julio, an arrogant son-of-a-bitch he never cared to play with as a child, terminally moody with skin as pale as a corn husk. Both of his parents had been dark-skinned; one of his earliest memories was having his arm pressed to Julio's as a joke during a birthday party. Yes, it's a tempting excuse, but cowardly. As long as they were under the Van der Linde banner he would do his part to make sure Jack never _went_ hungry or struggled to fall asleep during a cold night. Anything _more_ than those is at the whim of the mother, and that's that.

"...All right." Javier nods, bobs the cigarette to the corner of his mouth so he can smile properly. "I'm sorry."

She peers down at him, eyes filling with an old, familiar guilt he recognizes. He dilly-dallies with John here and there, but, well. He and Abigail had a few nights of their own when the man vanished for a year. How curious, that in any novel or play he would be the instigator! The one laying to waste their trust, a rattlesnake in the carriage, as musical _and_ as poisonous. Yet his presence has done little but reaffirm their love, tattered and explosive it can sometimes be. He thinks on this, turns it over and over in his head. The look she's giving him right now is a powerful one, a cacophony instead of a symphony. Nothing easy comes from a look like that.

"I'm not... _angry_ , just..." Abigail closes her eyes, frees him from that look, and blows out a sigh. "Really, thank you for looking out for him. For rescuing John, for all you're doing. These days it feels like you've been keeping my family together, one way or another, and it...means a lot." She pauses only to sip her coffee. Javier studies the sheen it leaves on her lips, shiny as a berry. "It was hard enough fleeing Blackwater, then going right back up that mountain..." She probably has no idea how much like John she sounds right now. Javier chuckles. Abigail's eyes promptly narrow. "What's so funny?"

"It's just...I don't see the point of it." He shrugs and turns to face the river. "We're family. That's what we do."

His conviction warms his chest. Yes, when Dutch finally cooked up a master plan, one that had them _all_ somewhere they could truly birth themselves anew...he wants to settle down with a house. He wants to have a family that, when held hand-in-hand and side-by-side, could stretch across the _county_. Grandparents, mothers, fathers, cousins, children, babies. He's certainly virile enough for a few, he knows _that_ much. Ah, it's not easy, keeping dreams alive and knowing every single day could be the day. The day a bullet shatters his skull instead of grazing his cheek. The day he turns the knife on himself and goes too far.

He doesn't know so much, but he _does_ know he loves them all. Loves her, too. It's painful, this love business. It _has_ to be.

"...Well. Don't mean I can't still be _grateful_." Abigail huffs, in her typical, firm concession on the matter. Javier looks past her at a distasteful stoop with yellow hair breaking away from the proceedings, slinking like a dog to the tents. ...Where the girls have retreated to break from the sun and resume their chores.

"Of course." He gets to his feet. "Excuse me."

Karen and Mary-Beth are filling up their basins by the water. Tilly is bent over another washing chore beneath the shade, though Susan's watchful eye is nowhere to be found. Micah has seen fit to take her place, it seems, leaning beneath the overhang in a way that is anything but friendly. ...Then again, his reputation as being anything but _anything_ tends to precede him. Javier steps quietly over the grass.

"Doing a good job there."

"...Thank you."

"So diligent." The man sucks in a breath through his teeth, a slimy sound that carries. "Women have such a... _knack_ , for simple things like this."

This pest of a man leans in _far_ too close, as if smelling her. Tilly's eyes are focused on her work, but she's more stiff than a plank of wood. For a moment he sees Laura, hair not done up in a series of complex plaits but long down her back. Kneeling not over a wash bucket, but a barrel of potato peels. Both of them shadowed by a man who reeks worthless power. As Dutch would say, " _He'd forgotten himself and found only appetite_."

Micah straightens up immediately when Javier claps him on the shoulder.

"Nice day, huh?"

He tries valiantly not to squint when Javier sighs smoke out into his face.

"Oh, _lovely_ , señor." He leans back, hooking thumbs in his belt loops and scuffing the grass with his heel. "Was just having a friendly conversation with this lovely miss. You... _do_ understand what we're saying, right?"

"Sure, sure. I understand that, like usual, a woman wants nothing to do with you." Javier holds his half-smoked cigarette between two fingers and rubs his goatee. "I also understand you _cut_ same as anyone. Anything else I _missed_ , or...?"

Micah holds up two hands and somehow shrugs a sneer, steps back and away. Ha. He's encountered braver _mice_.

"Sorry, sorry. Really, truly, I am." He says, pale eyes glinting with another meaning he soon gives voice to. "...Didn't realize she was already claimed."

"Enough." Javier snorts out the smoke this time, flicking cigarette ash at his silver-toed boots. "Get out of here. Go skip rocks or something."

"Such a _touchy_ Mexican."

He's a Mexican that would certainly be happy to touch him with his knuckles _or_ his knife, but he lets Micah be satisfied with the last word. It seemed to be what he woke up in the morning for. Only when he's slithered off out of earshot does Javier look to Tilly.

She doesn't look up from her washing -- hasn't so much as peeped this entire time -- but the drumming of cloth on board is off-key. Bouncing, jittery. ...Her hands are shaking. It's not the first time she's been on the receiving end of a man's wrong stare and, in spite of all the blood they spill, it won't be the last. Javier rubs his mustache, scratches at an idle itch when his presence isn't acknowledged. ...He gets it. It's not easy to talk about. He tugs over an old wooden crate -- normally for dishes, currently empty -- and tips it over to sit beside her. Without another word he pulls out his knife and his whetstone to perfect perfection.

Once or twice Tilly glances at him, something deeper rustling in those thoughtful brown eyes of hers. It's several minutes later does the washboard rumble with a steadier rhythm. They're side-by-side like that quiet night several years back, when he'd started to grow his hair out again and the English lessons were more redundant than illuminating. He'd asked Tilly about her thoughts on America, so _very_ different than what any white man or woman could tell him. She didn't have quite the same desperate stranglehold on her history as he did. Many people here didn't, really, marching onto America's shores staggering under the banner of a false solidarity that devoured rather than fed, but her people carried the heaviest. Even as they had brought with them the least.

It had kept him awake for hours, that night. What was worse? Having a place to belong and losing it forever, or never having that place at _all?_ Javier hums a low melody under his breath and admires the tip of his knife in the sunlight, so sharp as to nearly vanish. Micah doesn't approach them again. When a heavier, confident set of footsteps crunch on the grass an hour or two later his hackles don't raise, nor does Tilly shrink herself into a parody of the sincere, warm woman he knows.

"Miss Tilly." Arthur says, tipping his hat down at her. "Javier."

The man is geared up to ride. His rifle is strapped to his back and he's switched his faded coat for a rather nice tan jacket that compliments his eyes. Quite unlike his father, though, this can't _stand_ praise, so Javier keeps his thoughts to himself and starts puffing through the rest of his smoke.

"Got a lead, Arthur?"

His blood is already kicking up eagerly. That venture into that isolationist cult had been quite an interesting venture. The odds had been against them and they came out of it with a hefty few hundred dollars (plus a rather nice pair of ornate leather gloves he plans on holding onto). It was a few more deaths than he would've preferred, sure, but what were a few less kidnappers and hillbillies in the world?

"Sure. Got a stagecoach coming up from Rhodes. Let me return the favor." Arthur turns and heads straight to the hitching post. "I'd like you on the job, if you've got time."

He always has time for his family. Javier takes a second to pat Tilly's shoulder before crushing out his cigarette and heading over to Boaz.

*

" _I told you we needed to leave! Why the **hell** don't you listen?_"

" _For all I knew he had a little extra squirreled away and another sock to the gut would've jogged it loose! Shut the hell **up** already, you're griping more than Bill._"

It's a dusty day, sinking into a heavy evening that couldn't be prettier. Cloud of dirt choke up the long, winding trail before him, as heavy as if they were filled with water. A lot of activity passed here just before him, and he's lucky to have circumvented it in this state. A ripe orange is starting to bleed into his vision like a spilled cup of juice, darkening the trees into inkwork.

" _No, no...they ain't following us. Go on. We'll lick our wounds at camp_."

" _If we even make it_."

In spite of his wounds Boaz canters at a brisk pace. Javier, on the other hand, keeps stumbling backwards. Picking through the same trail and trying to figure out the _how_ and _why_ of this sudden, sour mess. The _what_ is already certain. Rich and powerful enemies were nothing new. Ha, if only! No...the answer is a bitter tang on his tongue. No amount of spitting can rinse it, though he tries.

Their mark today had stalled for time. It was an obvious act, but the promise of wealth had been tantalizing -- this man's clothes could've marked him from a mile away, they shone so brightly. It was just a shame they happened to harass the rare nouveau riche with _balls_. Torture had proven surprisingly ineffective, coupled with shrinking time there could have reinforcements waiting in the wings (or wanderers passing by with oversized hearts). Javier had been torn on getting creative. Most people talk eventually. Not him, not the Van der Lindes, no, but _most_. They just didn't have the damn _time_. Too long surrounding that carriage and someone was bound to notice and get involved, even amid these open hills.

The stolen watch bounces in his pocket. He _refuses_ to acknowledge the irony of going from shrinking time to stealing time.

It should've been a touch-and-go operation, as Hosea might put it. Anything but. Javier had been digging around for a third time in the frustratingly _bare_ carriage when Arthur's temper ran off with him. He yelled at the man, slapped him around until he sobbed snot and blood all over his shoes. Long enough for another carriage to roll up and cause trouble.

" _What the hell are you doing to that man?!_ "

" _Mind your business. We're just having a word._ "

Boaz had, through no small miracle, escaped with a series of grazes and scratches from their sloppy retreat. Even now it's hard not to keep checking his horse's hide for a bullet that lodged in. They could have lost more, just then, just like that! If not quite _then_ , then later at camp when they were followed. Upheaved after such a short time by their new river home, sent off again like a vermin, like pigeons. They wove a jagged path, they split up, he's alive and yet still coming up on Clemens Point in full flare. Throbbing with music that feels more like _screaming_ than singing. Banjo banter. Banjo banter. Banjo banter.

_"Make sure you're not followed."_

_"Follow your own advice, huh?"_

_Arthur scoffs at him and whips his horse around with a yank of the reins. Vanishes into the bright of the day. Soon the hoofbeats dwindle down to one set, though the hairs on his arms stay stick-straight._

...Idiot. That _idiot_. Javier dips his chin to his collar, shadowing his eyes beneath his hat's brim whenever he's passed by a stranger. Keeps his thoughts, and his rage, tucked in their holster.

"Hey. He all right?"

Charles greets him casually from where he's stationed by the trail, but he's watchful, ever the camp's proverbial hawk. Javier gives him a short, tight smile, then a nod, still attempting to mask his poor mood even as it's already being spotted and tracked. He can feel the man's eyes on him as he moves Boaz over by the hitching post and gets him settled; the poor thing is lathered in sweat from the hard ride, shivering and flicking his flanks. For a few minuets Javier just strokes his horse's neck, listening to the hiss of his tight breath as his chest _finally_ starts to unfurl and relax.

It takes the better part of an hour treating his gashes. He knows cuts. They're shallow, bloody, but nothing serious.

Pearson is banging the stew pot and calling out for dinner. He has no appetite. The cold fury that's sat and grown heavier and heavier during the dressing and feeding of his horse is enough to fill him for _days_. Javier kisses the tip of Boaz's nose, then goes to wash his hands off. Still dripping he gravitates to the fire like a moth and finds himself a seat, tugging out a strip of jerky from his inner coat pocket to chew on. His family rumbles complaints and gratitude and relief from all corners. A pleasant tingle kicks up on his shoulders when a familiar musky scent and scratchy key sidles on the log beside him.

"Nice job on the firewood, John." Pearson beams, proud of something or another. It can't be the stew, which smells the same as it ever does. "We'll be stocked for a good _week_ , huh?"

"Ain't nothin'."

His skin stirs again when John's knee brushes against his, too gently to be an accident. The man looks tired, but pleasantly so. Being put out of commission for a week and struggling through the second no doubt made even the most exhausting of chores feel wonderful. Javier looks over at the impressive pile of wood neatly stacked by a nearby tree; days of work completed in the span of a morning and afternoon. The stitches in his skin are gone now, too, save for one beneath his left eye -- he'd torn that one out by accident a few days ago, though hasn't felt the need to share how.

John takes a big mouthful of stew, one that bulges his cheeks, and frowns when he notices he's being stared at.

"...Ain't gonna tell you, Javier." He gulps and takes another bite, more inhaling than chewing. "Get over it."

"Didn't say anything."

"Yeah, you _kinda_ are."

Javier can't help a grin, in spite of himself. His friend can't, either. John tries to smile around his mouthful (looking _truly_ ridiculous), but at least his scars don't seem to be hurting too much now.

"So." He gulps audibly, bobs his chin at him. "How'd the job go?"

"Got a watch." Javier pulls out his canteen to wash the dry meat down. Yeah, he really should just pinch his nose and eat the stew already. "Better than nothing."

"Just a watch?" John crinkles his nose a little, almost as boyish as his son. In fact, that's probably where Jack got it from. "Whole stagecoach and you just got a watch?"

Oh, no, much more than a watch! Injured horses, wasted time, the low but still troubling possibility of being trailed or _recognized_. It's not the setback that troubles him. They were a part of life. It's the fact this could have been _avoided_. Like so much else. John reads it all on his face, eyes flicking from side-to-side like he's reading a newspaper.

"...That bad, huh?" He sucks the broth off his spoon, brows furrowing. "'m sorry."

Javier's mouth waters a little, but not at the scent of deer and poorly mixed spices wafting in the air. John smells like more than sweat and wood, but...safety. Maybe once he's done he'll steal him away, take advantage of the long daylight hours just outside the fringes of camp. Somewhere shaded and close. John senses the promise, hound-sharp as ever; his knee brushes his again, the corner of his mouth curling even as he continues to stuff his face. Javier watches a bead of sweat work its way down his long neck. Kissing him will no doubt taste like stew, but that's a sacrifice he's _more_ than willing to make.

Then a set of heavy footsteps approach the fire.

"Hey, Arthur."

"Arthur! Good to see you."

"Sit down, sit down, have some stew. You look bushed."

Yes, their bushed and tuckered senior gun. Their third-in-command. Their foundation. John leans back when Javier twists his jaw, staring warily over his half-finished bowl.

Everyone in this gang has their place, their role to play, but when Arthur staggers, they all do. What do they do if he keeps acting like Bill? Like Micah? They'll fall _apart_. A girl's head will burst into a red flower, their tails will be tucked between their legs, they'll end up scattered on a mountain face with a blizzard for dinner. Dutch _needs_ him. Hosea _needs_ him. They _all_ need him. Javier's hands itch. His scars itch. He tugs out his knife and whetstone, sharpening it by the light of the fire. A tight, satisfying _shee-shh_ as he moves the stone back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.

"Damn. That's quite a shiner there, Arthur." Lenny chirps, taking off his hat and laying it at his feet. His brow is shiny with sweat. "Don't tell me you got into another bar squabble?"

_shee-shh_

"Nah, I've sworn those off. Seriously." Arthur reaches up to touch his face and grimaces. "Just the usual."

_shee-shh_

"What was the score?" Uncle asks, picking a stray vegetable out of his beard. Arthur snorts and pokes his spoon in and out of his bowl, frustrated little stabbing motions. Always with a temper.

"Not enough for what we got out of it. It's in the ledger, that's all I care to say."

_shee-shh_

"Ah, well. Can't win 'em all." Uncle chortles, nudging Bill beside him. "We all got a little something to chew on these days, huh?"

Javier's voice carries low and bitter into the evening.

"Oh, yes." _shee-shh_ "Plenty."

The din around the campfire flickers. Bill is still grumbling under his breath at Uncle's comment, but the old man's attention is on him, one bushy eyebrow cocked. Lenny shifts on his seat, looking back-and-forth between them all. John is still watching him, though his gaze is now slitted with warning. Javier only has eyes for Arthur.

"You know..." He stuffs the stone in his pocket and blows on the blade. "...if you didn't explode we could have slipped away sooner. You know that, right?"

"Yes, I _know_ , Javier." He takes another bite and growls around it. "That was my mistake. I own it."

Javier points the blade at him. A distant voice tells him he shouldn't; it may or may not be in his head. Arthur's eyes flick down to it...then back to his face, pupils stretching until his eyes are round and black. He squares his shoulders, breathes through his nose short and heavy like a bull over his bowl.

"...Put that away."

"Oh, come on, Arthur. Just tell me what the hell you were thinking, first, hm?"

"I said my piece, now I won't tell you again, put the goddamn knife _down_."

Javier doesn't bother to hide his scoff, nor the crinkle to his lip. Arthur wasn't the only fearsome temper in the gang. Oh, _far_ from it. Maybe he needed someone to lose it on him, make _him_ feel the existential quail that comes with something that can't be given _back_.

"So nothing, at all?" He twists his hand to shrug, watches the man stiffen with alarm when the blade whips a hairsbreadth from the tip of his nose. "Nothing at all, Arthur?"

Arthur slaps his hand away. Javier shoves him. The man's bowl hits the ground, spills stew into the dirt. Pearson yells wordlessly, hands already rising up to placate, even though he's hardly a fighter. In a blink everyone's on their feet. Sadie shouts a warning, followed by Susan.

"Go on, lose your temper on me, put us _all_ at risk!" Javier spreads out his arms, flicks his fingers. "Come on!"

"You want a bruise of your own?" Arthur snaps. "I can give you more than that."

"Like my horse? Cut him up because you can't let things _go_ , Arthur?" Guilt flickers in the man's eyes, fast as a hummingbird wing.

"He's fine." His gaze flicks past him, across the camp to the hitching post, then back. " _You're_ fine. It was just a stupid mistake-"

"When's the _last stupid mistake_ gonna be, huh?" Javier's voice hits a sharp, sour note. "When's the last one gonna be?"

It's a film reel that skips. His life suddenly moves too fast, blinks out and comes back into focus. He can't see the faces of his family, but the near future where another mistake sends them scattering, the final one to top off their mountain of failures, sends all that he knows and holds dear _crumbling_. He's not blaming anyone. He's blaming _everyone_. Dutch shouldn't have taken that job. Bill should've listened to him. Arthur should've backed off-

"You nearly _killed us-_ " Javier whispers, stepping forward with a white-knuckle grip that feels like the only anchor in his world. Arthur's stance widens, right with his eyes-

-and, in another skip, he can't move. He can't breathe. There's a chest to his back, an arm around his neck, someone's breath in his hair squeezing him, choking him-

"Javier." John whispers in his ear. "Stand _down_."

Javier grits his teeth and holds his breath, what little he has left. Instinct kicks in. He stomps one foot onto the ground and lurches forward, trying to pull him off-balance instead. John bends, but he doesn't break, _just_ tall enough to hunch instead of flip. Javier's knee hits the ground again, closer to his dropped knife. How did he lose it? He whips out a hand for it, but John kicks it away, _damn_ him. A spark of wild adrenaline lights him up. He thrashes suddenly, twists from side-to-side.

"What the _hell_ is wrong with you-" Arthur hisses. Javier would spit in his face, but he doesn't even have _air_ , and everything is buzzing like a thousand flies-

"Stop it! It's over. Back off, I got him, it's fine." John's voice sounds far away, then far too _close_ , right by his ear. "Stop. Stop. It's done."

It's never done. It's never _finished_. Javier tries to jerk his head back in a headbutt, but it hits John's collar instead of his nose. The helplessness turns to bitter cold in his veins. He claws at the arm around his neck. Digs nails into the exposed skin, grinds, _pulls_ until it's wet. John's curse is a hoarse hiss right in the pit of his ear, but he doesn't let go. Arthur swims in front of him. The man is still boxed up for a fight, yelling something that doesn't register. He then steps forward, to slug him in the stomach or push John off or _something_ , only to halt when a broad, blue shape takes him by one shoulder. Charles.

He feels himself cooling, softening from an instinct that feels as dangerous as a stranger, the burning in his chest contrasting oddly with his light, fuzzy head. John loosens his grip, just enough for him to speak.

" _...Get off_." Javier wheezes. John stiffens, conflicted.

"I will, but you have to calm down-"

" _ **Get off**_."

John lets him go, and he lands on his hands and knees in the dirt.

He saved him from being strangled. Why is he strangling him here, in front of everyone, when all he wanted was different, better, _something?_ Javier stumbles to his feet, wheezing and coughing, gripping his neck. He still can't breathe. He's still alive, the buzzing is fading to the corners of the muggy day, but he still can't. He hates him even more than the government hounds that chased him from all his hopes and dreams. Hates him more than the _dogs_ , more than the sleepless nights, more than his ruined skin.

"Javier?"

John's face changes, swims. He catches it _just_ as it's blank with tension, as he always gets when about to pull the trigger. Then it sags, splitting like a spidercrack on glass to flower every emotion under the sun. Love, anger, fear, shock, confusion-

" _Puto_." Javier rasps, venomously, and John pulls back like he's been struck.

Arthur is talking in low tones with Dutch, fresh from his tent and still composed amid all the alarm. His voice still rumbles with anger, but his head is low, gaze downcast. Then Dutch looks at him. Sees him, and...

Javier turns and leaves. Nobody stops him as he walks away from the fire and past the hitching post and through the trees up the hill. As far as he can go without leaving.

*

_the sky is thick_

_i think i want to fly away, for a bit_

_a day or two, not high enough to stay low_

Javier stares at a bee, or perhaps a down feather, bobbing fitfully in the breeze.

_i think I want to, but where would i go_

_when all of it_

_is snow_

Why does he keep bothering? His voice is ruined again. He tries to smooth it out like a hand on crumpled paper, but it crackles and curls at the corners, shriveling by the heat of the fire. Maybe as permanent, definitely as wispy.

_none of it's as blue as it's supposed to be_

_one more cloud to go_

_if it won't rain I'll bow_

The rest of the evening is a dull, tired pink. Just a sliver on the far horizon past the river, like a window cracked open and needing to be shut for the night. When the bee or feather vanishes Javier stares down at the brown crust beneath his nails. John's blood, which he keeps telling himself to clean off, but moving is too much. It grates, all this clutter. He rubs uselessly at the grass stains on his jeans, picks and scoops at his nailbeds, scratches at the inside of his wrists once he's done. Stares, not really at anything.

"Looks like tonight will be a nice one. Don't you think?"

Javier looks up at Hosea's soft, worried face. Looks back over at the strip of pink. It's gone now, gray and fuzzy. How long has he been sitting here? Dinner is over, but he's still...here.

"...Yeah."

Hosea turns and coughs into his shoulder a few times. Javier can see himself reaching out and patting his back, assuring him, but his body doesn't move. He watches the old man lean down and settle carefully beside him on the grass. Javier wants to ask about that cough -- it doesn't sound good, it really doesn't -- but all he can do is stare. His body hasn't been obeying him lately, in any regard. Maybe this is a good thing. A far away sound turns his gaze for a moment. Jack, splashing and squealing in the water with the dog. Hosea speaks, and he turns again.

"Tilly saved you some stew. Seems like Pearson is finally getting the hang of cooking meat without strangling it of all its flavor and it's been quite the hit." He stifles a cough behind his fist. "Are you all right, son?"

Javier nods, for some time, but the words don't come out for a while. Hosea's a patient man. He waits.

"I'm...not sure. I mean, I... _think_ I am, or, rather, I _thought_ I was, but it...doesn't really make that much sense." He tilts his head, as if he can tip it all back into place. "...If that makes sense."

"A little." Hosea's voice lowers to a hum, lingering on the note as he tries to pick out the right words. "You've, mm...seemed stressed lately."

That doesn't make much sense, either. He's alive. He's here. He must've eaten something, too, because his stomach feels warm and sated, and there's no stubborn parch to his throat or throbbing cut to tend to. Just the ghost sensation of something around his neck, but...that's never really gone away. No, not really. No, it makes no _sense_.

"I'm not." Javier says, rough voice plaintive. "I'm happy. I'm with all of you."

Hosea, as Dutch often called him, was a doubter. He's doubting him now, but not out of faithlessness, or a cloying demand. As much as he loved Dutch -- adored him, maybe, adored him so very much -- he found it easier to open up to Hosea. Him and his doubt. It was the stone that kept the balloon from floating off into the endless blue. The anchor that kept the boat from drifting off to be forever lost at sea.

"It's hard not to think of when you first arrived to America. When you met us all and fell into this hard-earned life of rabblerousing." Hosea narrows his eyes, tilts his chin up a little, like he's watching the past unfold just beyond the trees. "You were like this a lot the first, mm...year or so, though it certainly got better by the end of it."

That's...strange. His cheeks are wet, _very_ wet, but his face hasn't moved. Not so much as a twitch of the nostril. Rainwater trickling down a statue. Still. Motionless. Javier blinks and blinks, stares at nothing, the sensation of warm on cool on warm, down his cheeks to his lap, all of it as distant as the sound of Arthur and Dutch talking by the fire. He reaches up to wipe at it, but it doesn't mean much, even then.

"I think so..." Javier responds, rubbing the wetness between his fingers until it disappears. "Maybe."

"Not exactly, of course, but, well. Even _before_ you told us, it was clear your world had turned upside down. Your family, your community..." Hosea trails off, hums again. He wasn't one to repeat unnecessarily, and this man's grace almost seems holy, for a moment. "Is this similar?"

Yes? No? He's...not sure. No, he is. He _is_ sure.

"Things aren't...working like they should."

Oh, he _hates_ this, this...cotton thickness in his throat and mind, suffocating the words that come so easily other days. He wants to pinpoint Arthur's sudden, explosive anger and the fire it can catch on others' clothes; an anger he understands, but still has to be kept in _check_. He wants to rant about Micah and the unease he so regularly sows like grain. He wants to ask why they're here! Why they're _still_ running and fighting when he wants to stop, stop fighting, just _breathe_ and _live_. He can't talk. He can't sing. He just leaks.

Javier clenches his fists. Slowly shakes his head. Hosea's sharp eyes pick out the rest of it.

"I know. Some days it truly feels like too much to handle. Dutch is...he's still..." He tries, valiantly, then sighs. An exhausted, heavy sound. "Well. You know. I'll still talk to him about it all."

"Dutch killed that girl." Javier says. Hosea rubs his forehead.

"...He did."

And maybe he would've killed Arthur, if John hadn't stopped him. Javier rubs at his neck, at the wetness there.

"I'm sorry, Hosea." He picks and picks and picks, trying to feel something. Anything. "I'm really...I'm really sorry."

"I know, son. I know." His voice lowers, as kindly as if he were a child on his knee. "You're unwell. Perhaps have been, but it's, mm...peaking like a fever, perhaps. It happens to all of us at some point. That said, _I'm_ not the one who needs the apology. Arthur won't admit it, but he feels pretty terrible about what happened to you both."

Javier watches his life down the hill, rippling like a riverbed. Nodding vaguely. That's what Hosea does. Speaks truth to truth.

He's not...well. That's what it is. It's _still_ not as easy as an anchor or balloon tied with stone and string. If he's sick he could...infect others. Maybe not with a _cough_ , but with the madness that fills him at a moment's notice, overflows and spills everywhere. He had to flee Mexico to save his family. His friends, his woman. Will he have to leave _this_ one, too? Be mad somewhere else, sing somewhere _else?_ Javier doesn't realize his hand's moved until it's cupping his throat. Rubbing almost innocuously, but with the intent to squeeze or dig shivering in his knuckles.

He thinks...he thinks he'd rather die, first.

"Just do me a favor, Javier."

"What?"

"Don't try too hard to be Dutch...or me, for that matter."

Something brushes against his shoulder. It shocks him like a whip lash, makes him jolt and recoil. He reaches for his knife hilt and watches Hosea, hovering a hand next to him. With it comes the realization that he's feeling everything again, he's broken through that horrible, muffled cloud of _nothing_ , but the gratitude doesn't quite sink in. All he can register is that he's being touched and he hates it. Doesn't want it, can't take it right now. Maybe he wouldn't feel it again -- everything still feels too slow, he's not frozen solid, completely, but _still_ the better part of melting ice -- but he can't.

Javier shakes his head. Hosea pulls back.

"The stew is still in the pot. Still warm. Eat up, all right?" He gets to his feet with a soft grunt, leaning hands on the small of his back and popping a stiff joint. "I won't have you going skin and bones on me like Marston did."

He wants to tell him of course not, he's _happy_ to be well-fed with warm food and love, but all he can do is watch Hosea stride down the slope and back to the fire with the others.

"...Hosea?"

The man pauses and looks over his shoulder.

"...Can I go fishing with you next time?"

"...Of course."

Hosea settles at the fire with the others. Dutch tosses an arm around his good friend's shoulders and pulls him close to his side. Javier hums and picks and scratches.

Trying to understand why he wants something that looks so gentle, yet seems so foreboding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can likely tell at this point, this fic diverges a little from Javier's canonical anger, as he starts spiraling downhill more near the end than this early. Even then he's more on the passive-aggressive side than out-of-control. I wanted to explore the concept of him starting to show mental and emotional cracks earlier in the game. Dutch's madness is practically a fever. Only some recover from it.
> 
> Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go continue this metaphor by battling this abruptly upcoming cold.
> 
> godfuckinggggggggggggggdammit


	5. luna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song Inspiration: "Barefoot Friends" by Elephant Revival
> 
> Trigger warning for mentions of domestic violence, depictions of self-harm, ableist language and dissociation/questioning of reality.

 

*

_it's the rain on a tin roof_

_it's so humid_

_can't tell the water from the wind_

_such a fine line situation_

_i got patience_

*

_"Que pintura tan fea."_

_"La me gusta. Es...interesante."_

_"Pues...fea."_

_Javier bears Laura's scowl with pride, as it's still the prettiest thing he's seen all day. She gives him a little push and steps further down the hall, bare feet as silent as a cat's on the stone._

_Ah. He only ever could have fallen for an artist. That was his curse from a young age. An artist with strange taste, at that. This painting (and the next and the next down this ridiculously long hall) is one of those ridiculous abstract pieces, the ones where the viewer did all the work. Nothing but splatters and shapes. The colors are nice, he supposes, but if anyone asked him the old poncho he wears would be a far better replacement. It was made by his grandmother during her free time on the weekends, also covered in shapes that still had intent, elegance. It'd been oversized, too, but that just meant he could grow into it._

_"¿Y esta?"_

_"Mejor que aquella. Todavía parece que el lodo arco iris."_

_Laura scoffs and tosses her hair. She won't admit it, but she finds his selective artistry amusing. She fell for an artist, too, after all! First his song, then his heart. He pinches her butt and enjoys the barely checked squeal he gets in return. It's a soft sound, but it echoes and pings off the low ceiling and close walls. His boots are time worn and nearly as soft as cotton. He might as well be barefoot as they sneak into an alcove to kiss hastily, the thrill of secrecy heating their blood._

_Their lives felt like oil and water, sometimes. Like they could never truly blend together, even when pushed close. Him with his running and planning under the cover of night, her with trying to blur into the background during daily chores. More like the sun and moon, really! She certainly shone as bright for him, even the earrings peeking out of her dark locks winking like stars. The now is a rare, glimmering treasure. Javier doesn't hesitate to confess it, snaking an arm around her waist and breathing in the jasmine perfume she wears for him._

_"¿Qué haces aquí, campesino?"_

_There's no sun or moon when the colonel steps into the room, eyes wide with dawning realization and a cold, cold rage._

_His blood is a wine red stain that brings out the yellow in the cobblestones. Perhaps the first and last painting he'll ever have to his name._

_"You killed us, Javier." Rainbow tears course down his love's cheeks, running rivers over the fingers gripping her mouth and strangling her scream. "You killed us **all**."_

Javier opens his eyes not to a noose and cold bars, but to a heavy blue curtain that stretches endless. Not to his dried spit and blood on his shoes, but fading stars and cricket chirps and a timid fire crackling to his left. Sadie is feeding the chickens. She murmurs a greeting to him when he sits up. He nods back, but doesn't say anything, instead listening to his pulse whisper moth-bitten songs.

"You all right there?" The woman asks as she fills her feed bag by the supply tent. Javier considers her tone. She's been the least wary around him, even after what he did. It makes sense, considering the demons she battled every waking moment. Where he wears the howling rage like a scarf or a belt, one of the many glorious details that carved him into who he is, she wears it like a second skin. That's what he wants to believe, anyway, but the tips of his fingers have found his neck again, and they keep scratching.

"I'm alive." He responds, simply, and rubs at his throat. Sadie nods, once, and goes back to scooping grain.

His life now feels like that painting. A flat, fictional thing that someone else owns. Erratic. Scattered. Left up to someone else's interpretation, if they came to one at all.

The sun blots out as he rubs hands over his face wearily. Even his dreams are composed differently. Snatches of his mother tongue, invasive pops of the second. Javier tries not to think too hard about what it means, that two languages have now blurred together in his mind that he can hardly peel them apart. He thinks of it, anyway, as he gathers a change of clothes and washing supplies. Just because he runs from so _much_ doesn't mean he's a coward that avoids the truth. No...no, it doesn't mean that at _all_. Running has been the bravest thing he's ever done. He didn't run yesterday, or the day before that, or the day before that one.

He can't run today.

Even with all the new folk that have fallen into step with the Van der Linde dream...word spreads. Everyone knows about his outburst. Throughout the next few days it traveled in whispers and averted gazes. Even Reverend, who had a loose hold on reality at the best of times, muttered a prayer under his breath whenever he walked by. Everyone, that is, for Jack. At least...he hopes. When Javier prays by the water's edge he doesn't add an addendum about his reputation. That was _his_ responsibility, and _his_ alone. He just asks the Lord if he'll make sure Jack just comes out if it all okay.

Javier washes in the river. It's freezing in the early hour, almost as bad as that blizzard, and it's exactly why he lingers longer than usual. Night terrors have left him sweaty, sticky. He splashes his face overmuch, enjoying the pleasant slap of cold on cool. Soon his gratitude runs out, though, when the cold air nips at him and turns his skin into sandpaper. He dries off and sits on a nearby rock running flower oil through his hair, threading and rinsing until it's shiny as silk. Once or twice his fingertips brush his scars, but his appearance is music, and the itch doesn't consume him quite so badly. He hums to himself and mulls over the days that have passed, unbroken by violence and so peaceful he had the bliss of being bored.

A dog arrived in camp yesterday. A gray mutt with a soft personality and a few too many ribs showing. Dutch, helpless father that he is, has since christened the hound theirs, and the family feels warmer for it. They're never without their squabbles, not with Bill getting drunk in the middle of the day and Hosea losing his rare temper more than once, but it's...good. _Good_ living. _Good_ weather. So good he indulges in a little pain to remind himself he's not dreaming. Even when Molly and Karen went at it yesterday he could hardly find it in himself to get concerned, little more than amused when the Irishwoman ran off with her face in her hands and her tail between her legs. She really needed to learn how to throw a punch.

Wary as they are, scared though they are...it's a warm, good, perfect little life he's found here. Javier checks his hair for any lingering dampness, then ties it back. Buttons up his gray-brown vest and tucks in his red ascot. A fond note warms the center of his heart as he pulls on his worn, well-loved blue blazer. ...Yes. Those little Van der Linde things. He gathers up his washing supplies, then takes a minute or two to pluck a handful of the tiny white flowers that grew near the trees here. He knots them together by their stems, then walks over to where Tilly is still sleeping with the girls, setting it atop her small leather dresser.

Someone restocked the coffee recently. It must've been Arthur. It's a good roast, that he can already tell by breathing it in; dark and rich, perfect enough on its own without milk or sugar. Javier pokes at the morning fire as he prepares the pot, nudging embers closer to the driest sides of the wood. It'll be ten or fifteen minutes until a boil. He sits himself at the nearest table and drags the knife through the wood as he waits, watching the splinters pop and curl away from the tip. All his sharpening has seasoned the blade to a supernatural edge. It's almost holy, the way the fibers come alive and part like the red sea. Susan's not going to be pleased, but she rarely was. When he's done the trembles of metal on wood still vibrate through his fingers.

"Coffee?" Javier asks Sadie as she walks by again. She takes the cup with a small, rare smile.

"Thanks."

John is deep asleep in his tent. He can tell by the tilt to his head; on his back with his legs crossed at the ankle in his typical way. The weather's been too warm to wear much to bed, even during the dead of night. His sleeves are rolled up past the elbows, his collar left open. Javier lets go of the tent flap over his shoulder, studying the cuts he left on his forearms. Little half-moons, deep red even in the sliver of light allowed by the tent. John wakes up, before he's said anything.

"Javier?" He mumbles, dragging a hand over his face and blinking unevenly through his fingers. "...'s late."

"Early." Javier corrects, softly. He holds out the cup. "...Here."

John perks up like a tired dog. He rolls up off his back into a sitting position, eyes crushing shut as he yawns childishly wide. He scrubs knuckles over his eyes, then reaches out with the other. Javier sits on the edge of the cot by his feet and puts his chin in one hand, affection warming his chest as he watches the man huff and sip himself into wakefulness.

"...So." John says a few minutes later, when the dawn outside the tent has risen higher and their shadow has started to bleed away. "...You doin' okay?"

He's alive. He's here with his family. He's-

"Not...really." Javier knits his fingers together and stares at the grass between his shoes. "I'm..." He shrugs his hands out, clasps them together again. "...I don't know."

They sit in silence. John sipping the peace offering and Javier trying to look somewhere other than his forearms. Burning, twisting sensations that writhe like snakes in his stomach at the sight, this...vivid memory of wanting to hurt, hurt and subdue and humiliate in _any_ way he could, as if none of their years existed at _all_. He's not a coward. He looks, but discreetly. He can't have John thinking he wants to do that again. At least, not in that way. Not with that intent. Never.

"Damn good coffee." John mutters, sucking down the last sip noisily. Javier smiles a little.

"Yeah."

John scratches irritably at his last stitch, then, and Javier tells him it's probably ready to come out. He waits for his friend to grab his black jacket, then heads over to the campfire, the dawn pulling back into an almost surreal lavender. Prettier than any painting. The man's face is smoother and more even now. Looking at him doesn't conjure up helpless memories of that mountain, not quite. There's just one bruise left. On his cheekbones where the last few strings are.

"Tired of my face always goddamn _itchin'_. Damn, it'll be nice to get this over with."

Javier takes out his knife and sits on one of the logs. John hunkers down on the ground and lays his unmarked cheek against his leg. He angles the tip of the blade until the point catches on the rivet, starting with little tugs. They pop free easily. The man doesn't even wince. If anything he's distracted, staring off into the distance for a moment before looking back.

"...That's clean, right?" He asks, barely moving his lips to keep the blade steady. Javier hums low under his breath and tilts his head to keep track of where the light falls.

"Mind who you're talking to."

Another stitch pops out, the skin beneath red, yet firm. Javier glances to him. His friend's hands are folded over his stomach, legs curled close together, watching him with a still, steady gaze. Trusting him, always. Even though he knows what he can do, and has _tried_ to, during his lowest points. Like a moth to flame Javier's gaze drifts away from that scratched face...to the scratches he left on his arm. Then a cold, sad realization ripples through him. He studies again the soft welt on John's cheek surrounding his remaining stitch. Yes...it's large enough to be left by a hand.

John's mouth grinds into a thin line. He stares at the fire.

"Don't really want to talk about it."

"...Okay."

One more tug and the job is done. Javier leans down a little to kiss it, then maybe taste the coffee on his breath, only to halt when John's hand presses to his chest.

"Not now."

Javier looks up. Jack is awake. His feet are bare, not dirty yet thanks to the morning dew.

"Morning, Pa. Morning, Javier."

Javier's chest sinks with relief. Days later and he still doesn't seem on-edge around him. Either he didn't see, or didn't see anything more than the usual squabblings. It's a selfish feeling, when he himself had said to Abigail the boy shouldn't be sheltered _too_ much, but...he's glad.

"Hey."

John's greeting is flat. Even. It's still a habit of his, this skittish and withdrawn behavior around his son. Sometimes he wonders if it'd take Jack getting kidnapped to get him appreciating what he has. Javier keeps his expression devoid of anything incriminating, delicately wipes his knife on his pants.

"Your father is all good to go." Javier holds out the stitches. "See?"

Jack takes them and fiddles, crinkling his nose at the dry blood stuck to the string. Javier leans back and lets John get to his feet, the man muttering under his breath that there's work to be done. He might as well get started on his day. It won't be for another hour, still, when Bill comes back from sniffing about town. It's another job, this time shadowing a caravan loaded with supplies heading to Rhodes. He's not looking forward to it. It threatens to pull his mood down already, really. It needs to be done, though...and he'll do it.

For family.

It's a bump in the seam. A stitch that can't be overlooked. Javier goes back to the table to check his anger early, sitting down and splaying his left hand on the old wood. He takes a moment to study the thin, silver scars along his knuckles, then pulls out his knife and steadies the point an inch above. He taps it through the gaps, slowly. One. Two. Three. Four. He flips the knife in a swift circle, shifts in his seat a little. Repeats. One. Two. Three. Four. Flip. It's harder to see the stitches with the silver edge blinking in the bright morning light. One. Two. Three. Four. Faster. Onetwothreefour. Flip. Onetwothreefour. Flip.

Little-by-little the camp comes to life. Kieran is over by the horses, currently brushing Old Boy. Abigail chats softly with Mary-Beth over coffee. The beautiful, beautiful music of his life. Even a heavy cast shadow suddenly falling over the table doesn't break his rhythm.

"You up for a round?"

Javier looks up to Arthur, in his worn tan jacket and studying him with a tilt of his head. Looks back down.

"...Always. Have a seat."

Arthur grunts his thanks and sits down, puffing smoke out of the side of his mouth. He reaches into his inner coat pocket and offers him a cigarette from his (still indefinite) stash, which Javier accepts. It's a good game. It always is. Arthur was a better shot with a gun, but his skill with a knife was pretty respectable. Just third after Lenny, with that supernatural luck of his. They trade jabs as they trade stabs, neither wanting to be the first one to get struck. Then-

" _A cat!_ "

Arthur nicks himself and curses.

" _Agh_ , shit-" He flaps his hand in the air. "Damn."

They both turn to Jack, completely oblivious to their reactions and leaning forward with his hands on his knees. A sleek, spotted cat is basking in the sun before him, green eyes lazy.

"A cat!" Jack lowers his voice to an awed whisper. "Look, look!"

"Ay, so it is." Javier grins at Arthur, currently sucking at the cut on his finger. He finishes, flourishes, doesn't bother to hide his pleased smile. "Know what you'd call those in Spanish?"

"A gato?"

"There you go." Javier leans down and holds out his fingers. It observes him regally, sniffing after a moment's hesitation. "Cute little thing." It's friendly, letting him rub behind its ears without so much of a flick of the tail. "Go on. The neck or the, ah, chin. Might scratch you if you go for the belly."

"Oh, okay. I love cats." Jack pets it gently, voice still a whisper. "Cats and dogs and birds and...well, fish are okay. You can't _hold_ them." He looks up. "Do you like cats and dogs and birds?"

"Cats are good. They're cute, they clean themselves. Birds are musical, very good, too." Javier bobs his head from side-to-side. "Dogs, eh."

"You don't like dogs?" The tiny child is aghast. Javier chuckles.

"Not as much as cats or birds. Cain is the best one, for sure." He ruffles Jack's sandy hair. "You have good taste in pets, conejito."

"Oh, I didn't find him. Or her. He just came here. Or she."

"Didn't we all?" Javier chortles. "But you let him or her stay, just like Dutch." He reaches down and gives Jack's chin a fond little pinch. "Well done, little man."

The boy beams. Their feline visitor soon gets annoyed by all the attention, standing up and slinking off. Jack creeps after it, cooing to try and get its attention. Javier turns as Arthur tugs his knife out of the table. His eyes are soft, as they always get when the child is nearby.

"Not a fan of dogs?" He asks. Javier hums and settles back at the table.

"Being bit while running for your life has a way of making them look less cute and fuzzy."

"Ha." Arthur inspects the gouges on the table. "You and Marston have a lot to relate on."

Javier slowly raises an eyebrow.

"Not funny."

Arthur watches him evenly for a second. Then he looks back down to the table. Javier's skin tickles unpleasantly. He's touched on a nerve, perhaps, or there's a question he wants to ask that hasn't yet been put to order.

"...You okay there, Arthur?"

"Fine, I'm fine." He sucks in the rest of his cigarette, crushes it out. "Actually, why don't you...put down the knife for a minute. Go fishing or something, I got it."

It takes him a moment to realize what he's referring to.

"No, Arthur, you don't have to, it's just another job-"

"I said I _got_ it." He jerks his chin at him. "Go on. Take a little time off while you can, before there's another something that has us all risking our necks for a dream. Bill can just fill me in on the way."

Javier huffs a laugh, as best he can with his chest suddenly hot and tender. He reaches over and pinches the man's cheek.

"Ay, look at you, _caring_ about me-"

Arthur slaps his wrist, rolling his eyes.

"Oh, get _off_. Get out of here before I change my mind."

 

*

"Got a nibble yet?"

"You asked two minutes ago, John."

"Yeah, and it's been two minutes. That a _no_ , or...?"

Javier entertains the very brief and immature urge to blow a raspberry. Instead he maintains his dignity and lifts his chin, snorting as soft as a landowner that just noticed a speck of mud on their shoes. Ah, he'll _miss_ this little river. It's just as much a home as anywhere else they've been. Unlike John, he's perfectly fine sitting in one spot for hours at a time. Javier shifts from foot-to-foot a little, eyes flicking over the water. He whistles, softly.

"You keep whistlin' that tune." John grunts. He swats at a fly, making his fishing rod bounce. "Where's it from?"

"Just a little thing I made up. Ballad for a dusty day, maybe."

"All right. 's pretty." John wasn't very much an artistic type, but, if anything, that made him appreciate the craft more. Where would art be without an audience? "Tryin' to serenade the fish, then?"

"If they'll listen." Javier studies John's usual expression. The furrowed brow sloping low over dark eyes. The angry rivlets in his cheek and nose make him look rabid, even though anyone who knew him knew the man to be a thorny knot of loyalty and love. "You trying to scare them away?"

"Tch. No."

He reaches up to scratch at his scars. Stops halfway and scowls all the harder, just like the hundred of times he's done since he was carried down from the mountain half-frozen. Thoughts nearly as cold carry into the space. Shivering, tattered thoughts that don't fit the day. Javier rolls his neck until it pops, pretends the itch there is some bug. Swats at his skin, to keep the illusion.

"Shoo." Javier mutters. John shuffles a little over on his rock.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Speak it into existence, and it could very well become true. The thoughts are unwelcome guests and will be treated as such. The day is simply too beautiful to think of what didn't happen. What _could_ happen.

"Yeah, a whole lot of nothin'." Javier frowns at his tone...until he realizes John's poor mood is turned not to him, but the water. John's eyes flicker, low-lidded and, in spite of himself, relaxed. Ha. Fishing is magic. It turned even the grouchiest of men into sleepy dogs. "How long's it been? An hour? Think fishin' ain't my forte, Javier."

"You could always just shoot the fish. Headshot them with that magic eye of yours."

"And get punched for it?" John surrenders. Delicately pokes his pinky nail in and around his scars, doggedly pursuing the itch he's been struggling with all afternoon. "I don't need _more_ stitches."

Javier can't fight back the chuckle .

He's still lost in the lull of his fishing spot, but watching the familiar zig-zag ripple of John's back as he rolls his neck...it's a dash of something more. It was _so_ long ago, but the memory is as clear as the water below. They'd gone fishing somewhere near Mount Hagen (strange how some things are so easy to recall, while the rest slips through his hands). John had gotten cocky, a sudden spurt of childish confidence that had him pulling out his pistol and firing into the water. He'd killed the fish, of course. He could hit _anything_. The rest were gone, though. Disappeared far down the river. If Javier shook his right hand, right now, he could recall the precise angle his knuckles met the man's bad eye.

He doesn't. His line has just gotten a nibble, and all his patience is about to be _richly_ rewarded.

"Oh!" Javier grins, dances a little in place. "Oh ho _ho!_ "

"Got a bite?" John calls, voice sharpening with excitement. "Reel 'er in, then!"

"Oh, not yet!" He studies the way his line pulls, the bob and curve of the rod. It's a decent size. Enough for two, probably. "Gotta tire them out first. You pull too hard, too soon, and-"

"Pft. Spare me the lecture. You're worse than _Hosea_."

Well, he _better_ be. He learned from the best. A tug, a pause, then another tug...and it's _done_. The fish dances in the air, shining like a nickel in the sunlight. John calls him brilliant. Javier grins from ear-to-ear and grips the line, peers at the smallmouth bass wriggling in his grip. A female, judging by her size. _Definitely_ today's lunch. He steps further back onto the rock -- he won't have it jumping out of his grip like that _one_ time -- and tucks it carefully into his satchel.

"Hey, John." He winks. "This fish _is_ big enough for the two of us."

"Nice joke, Javier."

Javier grins, shrugs one shoulder and reaches into his pocket for more bait. Eh. It's not bad. He's settling back to cast out his line again when John cries out.

"Oh, _shit- _" He hisses, leaping to his feet and damn near slipping off the rock in the process. "Ah, shit, no-"__

"Watch your footing, John!" Javier can't figure out if he wants to laugh or berate him. How could this man shoot a rope _clean_ through while being attacked and barely hold onto a fishing rod? "Death by small pond is a pretty sad way to go!"

It's a delightfully tense minute as the fish struggles to rectify its mistake. When John's catch clears the water Javier's smile turns stiff. ...It's bigger than his.

"Holy shit... _ha_ , would you _look_ at this!" John holds it up in the air, grinning from ear-to-ear like a boy. "Ain't he a beaut!"

"Not bad." Javier shrugs. "Females _are_ bigger."

"Ah, sorry." He wiggles it in the air, smug. "Ain't _she_ a beaut."

Javier sticks his tongue out. John returns the sentiment in kind.

They put together a small campfire. John cooks. Javier thanks his foresight for bringing his pan and spices; it's the kind of day that _demands_ a meal on-the-go. Who is he to say no? John sneers as Javier watches him debone each fish, his large, scarred hands suddenly as nimble as a seamstress.

"Relax, Javier, I got this. You catch 'em. I cook 'em. Time for _you_ to learn from the master."

"All right, all right." Javier holds his hands up and leans back. "I'll wait and see how it tastes, _then_ judge you."

"Mighty kind of you, sir."

There's plenty of dry kindling for the fire. It takes no time at all for the cast iron to grow hot, hot enough for the oil to start hopping the instant it's poured. Javier flicks his hand when a drop hits his knuckles. ...Ah. Yep. There it is. He knew the memory would come back. John motions for him to hand over the spices. Javier plays coy, reaches over to do it himself, and without hesitation his friend snatches it from him. It's not _his_ fault he never uses the right amount. Surely enough, John sprinkles on a woeful amount, hardly enough to cover the fish, and Javier's disdainful snort is all he needs.

"All right, all right." He sprinkles more on, eyes flicking his way every so often. "That good enough, Chef Escuella?"

"Don't think I've ever missed Mexico more than I do now..." Javier groans and flaps a hand. "Ay, come on, more than _that_. It's seasoning, perfectly good red peppers and garlic, not _rust_. What are you doing?"

John rolls his eyes and sprinkles on more, then tosses the head, bones and scales into the fire. The once muggy summer air smells wholly of fish and peppers; Javier's mouth waters so hard it hurts. He pulls out the onion he brought and dices it up, waits for the fish to start leaking white before sprinkling it into the oil. He considers the length of the ride back, then pulls out the carrot for Boaz and chops it in half, layering it over. John lets out an impressed whistle.

"Damn, look at you." He's careful as he edges the flat of his knife beneath the fish, flipping it far more elegantly than he should with the makeshift spatula. "Makin' me look stingy. Didn't think we'd actually catch anythin'."

"You always underestimate me, John." Javier sing-songs. "Well, look at that. That's nice and flaky. You gonna cook like that for Abigail someday?"

"Yeah, I dunno. I ain't thinkin' that far ahead."

"Think she'd appreciate it." Javier watches shamelessly as John sucks fish oil off his knuckle. "Know I do."

"Ha."

He didn't bring plates. John makes sure to lord it over him as they use their hunting knives as forks, dicing away at their catch. Javier pokes the tip of his knife into his fish, admires the thick sliver of white flesh in the sunlight, sighs when he bites into it. Right now...it tastes like the best thing he's ever eaten. John keeps stealing glances. Or, rather, taking what he's being given. Javier licks fish oil off the flat of the blade, slower than necessary, then helps himself to another slice. Even when leans closer to the pan to help himself to the carrots, he knows John's gaze doesn't leave.

"...How the hell do you have _nothin'_ on you?" John slaps fish scales off his pants. "You did more work and somehow..."

"I groom myself, John. It's second nature. Surprised you could see under all that dirt."

"Excuse me?" He barks a laugh. "Just 'cause I don't need my reflection in my boots don't mean I don't groom."

This is debatable, but the sun is hot and his stomach's full. Javier, for once, surrenders the argument and leans his back against the near tree, sighing out his nose.

This sort of day...feels like a blanket. His skin is getting that certain blistering temperature, so hot it's _almost_ uncomfortable. Almost like home. He hums again the song that's gotten better with age, even as he's gotten more tired. John is done with his meal. He starts to pat his stomach -- his usual sign of contentment after dinner, like an old man that sits on a porch all day -- and pauses when he sees the state of his hands. John's eyes flick down his person. Then up. Then down. He holds up his oily fingers in threat. Javier smiles and holds up his knife, though is careful not to point it.

"You know I have no qualms about cutting you, too, right?" He says, sweetly. John spreads his hands outward, a smooth transition from threat to surrender.

"Didn't say nothin'."

"Oh, you _implied_ it."

He's seen. He knows. Javier doesn't move the blade as his friend crouch-shuffles over to him. John carefully wipes his palms off on his filthy pants, then slumps beside him companionably. Chin tilted up _just_ so when the blade tip still doesn't waver and ghosts along his chin's stubble. That's the thing. _One_ surrender is enough. Too much and it'll follow him around. They hold each other's gaze for a few pleasantly tense seconds. John smiles a little, leans his head back, then angles around the blade to kiss Javier's thumb knuckle.

"...Thanks for the seasonin'." He murmurs.

Javier passes his tongue over his lips, slick from the fish, studying the short scratch over the bridge of his nose, then the still-healing bruises beneath his eye. Still looks a little like mince meat, if mince meat were handsome. He pushes his knuckle a little. Meets teeth, then something much softer and warmer. John's eyes drift closed. He nibbles along his skin, softly. Passively accepts Javier's index finger when he pushes in, sucks the taste off them. Ha. Feed this outlaw right and he becomes meek and sweet.

"Thanks for using them, you animal." He scoffs, fondly. Dark eyes snap right back open, though curved with humor.

"I never get a break, do I? You're a real son-of-a-bitch, Javier."

"I'm _quite_ nice, actually."

"Nah, actually."

John's grin is crooked, silly. It's gotten that way these past few weeks. Careful not to tug at Susan's hard work. Frequent enough to become a habit. It's cute. Reminds him a little of when they were younger, barely men and still plenty angry, trotting eagerly in Dutch's shadow. The first thing that struck Javier about John wasn't his skill was a gun or even his husky voice, but how a smile never seemed to fit quite right on his face. It always seemed strained, a touch lopsided. When he found out about his history, well. It was small wonder he didn't have all _that_ much to smile about.

That's what made the Van der Lindes so great. That they did, anyway. When he kissed the man's cheek one year later, beneath an apple tree they'd plucked dry...he saw just how wide this man could smile.

_"What's the matter?"_

_Javier leans forward, eager to catch a glimpse of that rare little sight. John tucks his chin to his collar, turns away. Even that tan of his isn't enough to disguise it._

_"What, you never, uh, kiss anyone before?"_

_"'Course I have, shut up."_

John bulls him down. Pins him beneath his weight -- only slightly heavier than him, for all his height -- and kisses right under his chin. Javier drops the knife, lets himself slacken. Melts into the grass, a happy puddle without a care in the world (and still comfortable that all it'd take is a clever twist of his hips and hook of his ankle to flip him off). Javier pets the back of John's neck through his scraggly hair, guides him with little subtle nudges as the man tastes him. One hand palms between his legs, then slides up his stomach to start popping off the buttons of his vest.

Javier shifts out of it carefully, mindful not to rub on the grass and leave a stain, and sighs as some of the day's heat leaves with it. His ascot whispers off after, folded carefully atop the vest. They don't have to fuck. They could just lay here in the sun with their stomachs full and hearts fuller, dozing like cats until they feel like wandering back into camp. Javier's breath shivers in his chest as he enjoys the feel of teeth on his collarbone, hot breath skimming lower to breeze over his nipple and gnaw. Javier reaches up and plucks the first few buttons apart, enough so that the day's breeze snakes in to dapple goosebumps over his skin.

John nuzzles his face along the exposed skin eagerly. Licks his nipple, sucks at it until it stiffens harder than a pebble, nips too hard and makes Javier hiss. ...Oh, he'll miss _this_ , too.

"God, you're somethin' _else_."

It's said like it's been tugged out of him, a line yanked right out of the water. Javier shifts lazily, curls one leg to rub the side of his knee against the man's hip.

"Yeah...?"

Yes, it's like a fishing line. He wants to cast out bait and hear more. After so _many_ bad moments during so _many_ recent bad days it's addicting, John's more open fawning here. Javier knows it's manipulative...but he can't help it. He turns his face to one side, eyes low-lidded and lazy. It works like a spell. John's breath grows shallow, short. His mouth twitches, curls wide in a way he doesn't quite do with Abigail.

" _Hell_ yeah."

One calloused hand reaches through his open shirt, scrubs over his nipple again, pinches and rolls, always a little _too_ hard. Just how he likes it. Javier basks as he kisses along his chest, running his tongue between his pecs to gather up the sweat pooled there.

"You definitely did something to it this time. Smells like flowers..."

Then John's lips brush the side of his neck as he's moving up to smell his hair, hardly more than a whisper that feels too coarse, too harsh, _burning-_

_"Woah, what the hell, what's wrong-"_

_"Don't touch me. Get **off**."_

-and he _shoves_ him off. At first John thinks he's playing. Doesn't budge all that much, even pushes back, grinning wide, but the second he sees his face-

-and John's shuffling off and back, easy mood collapsing into blank confusion. Damn _idiot_.

"Sorry, that still hurts, right-" He starts, tripping over the words in his haste.

" _Always_ hurts, John." Javier spits out, voice fraying at the edges again. "Are you stupid?"

"That's..." His voice stutters, hurt and still a little confused. "You sure it's-"

"Don't. You got your own scars to worry about, huh?" It's so cold. How the hell did it get so _cold?_ "... _Mierda_."

John's expression tightens. His gaze narrows on him, focused-yet-unfocused, as if coming to a conclusion.

"...Fine. Whatever." It doesn't last long. He's already turning around again, peering at him too close when Javier's hands go to button his shirt and move to his neck instead. "Javier, stop. You'll make that worse-"

"Back _off_ , John. Don't mother me. You aren't even a father."

John's jaw drops. It hangs there for one very long, very hurt second. Then it snaps shut. His mouth thins.

"The...hell is your problem? I ain't motherin' you, I'm tellin' you to stop hurtin' yourself, you _loon-_ "

"No, don't get high and mighty, John. Isn't drinking hurting yourself?" Javier hisses. "Getting drunk at noon, huh? Getting hungover in front of your kid, hitting on Karen, on me, huh?"

"I'm not high and mighty!" John lurches to his feet, head bowed and fists clenched. "God, what the _hell_ is your deal? You get touchy over _nothin'_."

John whirls around and storms over to the fire, kicking dirt into it and nearly knocking over the pan in the process. Javier watches him throw the supplies together, breath coming out short, faint. ...What did he do? What...battle was he even _fighting?_ Javier pushes his hair out of his eyes with a shaky, unreliable hand. God, he doesn't...know. He can feel something similar moving through his veins, the same potent energy that spurred him into action the moment the rope was cut loose. When he clambered over a fence to escape a pair of dogs sent after him on his way out of Parral. But John isn't any of those things. John is his friend. His _dear_ friend, and he's-

"-sorry."

It comes out rougher than rope. Weaker than flesh. When he looks up John hasn't ridden off on his horse and left him at the river's edge, but it's clear he wants to, turned away with a stern angle to his shoulders that shakes. ...Shit. Javier runs fingers through his hair, closes his eyes and breathes in, even though the air feels foggy. Tucks a strand behind one ear and gets to his feet. Runs a hand over his mustache. His goatee.

"I..." Javier tries again. His nails are at his collar, attempting to crawl back to what they know. He balls them into a fist. "Ha. I, uh..."

John doesn't turn around. Javier's chest sinks, a heavy, mournful ache that gets worse with each new tick on the clock.

"... _Sick_ of bein' screamed at." He starts, huskily. "By _you_ , by _Abigail_ , by goddamn _Arthur_..." Then his voice spikes to a yell, a bullet snapping out of a chamber. " _I'm sick of it!_ "

Javier's stomach churns with sick, sick shame.

"It ain't...I'm not..." He holds up a shaking finger, then drops it. Turns away to glare into the forest. "I'm not _unfeeling_. I get it, you know? I get that I'm the camp idiot..."

"You're not an idiot-" Javier tries, hoarsely, and clicks his mouth shut when John bulls over him.

"The camp failure, the camp screw-up, the golden boy, _whatever_ , but it...it's not..." He snorts, attempting a dry laugh and failing. He lifts his shoulders and drops them. "...Whatever."

Javier threads shaking fingers through his bangs. Looks at his reflection at the water's edge. As Hosea would say, he's clean as a whip.

He'd taken care to wash his hair this morning. His vest is crisp, his shirt tucked in and his shoes shining. Yet, somehow...he feels like he's been splattered with _mud_. He's hypervigilant of every blink and breath, of _all_ the things he's telling his friend without even trying. Javier reaches out for him. Just one hand, one he can slap down or turn from, if he wants. He hopes he doesn't, he _hopes_ , and what has his faith been but consistent? John doesn't notice until he turns, notices his hovering hand with his good eye, and his expression tightens again. He doesn't tell him no. He doesn't leave.

Javier wraps his arms around John's shoulders, burrows his face into his shoulder, until the world grows dark.

"...Christ."

Like crumbling stones signaling an avalanche the hard, bumpy tension in John's body bleeds away. Javier crushes his eyes shut when he places a hand on the back of his head...and pets his head. Stiff, careful, slow little strokes. Javier tries to figure out the hot pull in his sternum.

It feels a little like heartache.

"...Was gonna thank you another way, actually." He says, after clearing his throat. Javier pulls back reluctantly. John squeezes his elbow, a little reassurance he didn't realize he was craving until it happened, then goes over and digs in his coat pocket. "Here."

He holds out his pipe and a tiny burlap bag he can smell from here. ...Damn him. Javier folds his hands and attempts to invoke Dutch's famous calm, the kind of firm-lipped countenance more suited to a statue in a plaza square than a flesh-and-blood man. It's no use. John already knows he's won. He crosses arms over his broad chest and considers him with a little judgmental flick of his eyes, up and down. He slowly, slowly grins, wide enough he looks like Jack.

"...Ah, see, _now_ you're nice." His jaw twists, lips angling up, some sort of pout or smug smile. "Well, imagine that."

"Catch a big fish like that, then cook it like that?" Javier drops his voice low, stresses the consonants. "Oh, I'll be as nice as you please."

"Oh, come on." John turns his blind side on him, pretending he isn't seeing the suggestive look. "I caught it all by myself and I _never_ fish."

"So did I." Javier waves his hand. "You gotta catch, eh, four or five more all by yourself before the day ends, though."

John rolls his eyes up to the sky. Javier thinks things are smoothed over enough he could walk over, wrap arms around him and nibble at the scars on his cheek, but...this day is already a lot. Even holding him...had been a lot.

"Back to mean, huh."

Their pond only promises so much. They'll be able to speed things along further down the river. They kick out the rest of the campfire thoroughly, though not before John picks up a stray burning twig and uses it to light the pipe, sending the tang of weed into the air. He hands it to him after climbing onto Old Boy. Now, the drink he can handle. This, though, was one plant he had to pluck carefully. Only reason he didn't have any on him is because Bill, goddamn drunkard that he is, asked to borrow some and was _still_ waiting on paying him back. Javier sniffs the air. It's a pleasant mixture, hemp and fish. He could grow used to it.

"Susan slipped me some for the pain." John coughs, white clouding the air. "Ah. Had some left over."

The bag has a little curly _S_ on the front. John bobs the pipe when he doesn't take it, eyebrows raised. ...It's a peace offering. Even though Javier's the one that started the war. His shame throbs right in the meat of his neck, every heartbeat reminding him of the gratitude he _should've_ been showing. Javier takes his wrist. Guides it to his mouth to take a puff. John stares down at him in silence, expression shifting like the light on the pond. No longer smiling, watching him as though he might bite. Hell. Maybe he will.

"That's..." Javier coughs, snorts, waves the air. "Mm. That's good." He closes his eyes and lets the buzz float into his bones, an unconscious smile curling his lips. "... _Mm._ "

"Yeah?" John says, still not smiling, but his eyes are glinting with potential. "Tried to save some, but it was tough. The gunshot was one thing, but my leg..."

Oh, he knows. It wasn't a pretty thing to witness, his friend shivering and bleeding and unable to even walk. More thoughts drift in and out of his mind, not really sticking. They gather up their things -- Javier taking an extra minute to button and tidy himself up -- and head back out onto the road.

"Do you drink for pain, too?" Javier asks. John's eyes grow hard.

"No. Just...drink when I feel like it."

Hardly a note of playfulness or his enduring patience left. Javier nods once, breaks the gaze and lets the thread hang lose. It's a conversation he'll have to start up another time. He already dug into that scar far too hard. He hasn't earned the right to a softer touch just yet.

"...Here." John trots in closer, pipe out. Javier takes it.

"Just one more. We still gotta get back."

Just one puff turns into two. Then three. Then Boaz doesn't seem to be trotting quite right and the way John keeps swaying in his saddle is cracking him _up_ -

"Hey, hey, John. Give it here, I want another."

"You're going to smoke it all, you greedy bastard-" John wheezes, then clutches the reins. "Woah, watch where you're goin', I think Boaz got a few hits there, too-"

"Hey, no, you got drunk on the job, I can be allowed to...be allowed to..." Javier sputters and cackles. "Ah, ha ha, look at me. Hell, I don't...ha, even know what I was going to say. I sound like Bill!" He rubs his nose with the back of his wrist, giggling. " _Puto_."

English isn't a pretty language. Ay, it's all shitty hisses and licks, wet branches on his cheeks as he tries to bluster his way through unknown territory. He's been speaking it for years, it shouldn't be all...muddled together. Javier blows out more smoke than he knows what to do with and laughs. What language does he even _speak_ , anyway?

"You speak English and Spanish, last I checked."

"What?" Javier blinks, blearily. "What, I say that out loud?"

"That you did."

Javier's face hardens, eyes dropping low in an expression that has had bigger men than he pissing themselves...then sputters and plants his face into Boaz's mane. John laughs _harder_ , tossing his head back and nearly toppling off Old Boy.

"No, no, no, shut up, stop it-" Javier cackles, flapping a hand. "I speak many languages...faith, John. Faith and _loyalty_. I sing these songs, say these things..." He pats his chest insistently. "...from my _heart_."

"Yeah, like Ring Dang Do?" John snickers, rubbing at his face and shaking his head. "God, I love that song."

Javier does, too. But something more important catches his attention.

"John, hey. Why are you always touching your face like that?"

"'Cause it itches."

"No, no, no, no, no, you _fondle_ them, amigo. Pet them, like a purebred cat." Javier rolls his tongue in a purr. "A very manly one, of course."

"Proud of 'em, I suppose. One of the worst scrapes I ever been in and I lived to tell the tale. I'm the _dog_ now, man." Those scars stretch when he smiles at him. "Er. Wolf. Anyway. You should be proud of yours."

"I am." He pats Boaz's neck happily. "I am."

They sing a bar shanty together as they canter down the road, bleached bright beneath the sun. Their dusty day ballad's outro dizzy laughter and full bellies. He hopes to sing this very song again soon. With the hoofbeats and the rusty cackle of the man he loves by his side. The next day and the next day and the day after that.

It'll be a very interesting next hour fishing. A caravan drives by them, coats them all in dust that has them wheezing. John looks like he's just been sacked with a bag of flour. Javier reigns over Boaz so he can slap the dust off John's back, enjoying the hitch in his laughter...then clutches his stomach when the man tries to smack him back and collapses right off his horse into the dirt. It'll be hard to sing _and_ laugh, but he tries. He tries, like he always has.

"You owe me _big_ time for that one."

"I didn't knock you off that horse, friend."

"Might as well have. Hey, Javier, uh, sing that, um...that song of yours you've been working on."

He tries. He'll always try.

_el dia se corre sin nosotros_

_sigue el sol_

_sigue la luna_

_y protegerlos_

_querido_

_corre hacia el arbol_

_we don't need gold_

_corre desde el sol_

_just flourish the fruit in my soul_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another day, _another_ fic that's supposed to be a one-shot runs away from me. This was a really fun one to write, due in no small part to getting to practice more Spanish _and_ explore a character I'm falling in love with for the second time. I'm finding I really like doing these fics that are only a handful of chapters long (chapters that are rather long, admittedly, but that's beside the point). It's a sweet spot that lets me indulge in another story alongside my other obligations. Not too long, not too short. Just right.
> 
> It's pretty neat several readers noted Javier's mental health issues run along the lines of OCD. This is a disorder I was diagnosed with a few years back -- I don't think it's coincidence that this has also been a very stressful past month for me. It helps to explore these things as I go, alongside a few other ills like depression and unhealthy coping. If anything, falling into an obsession is a double-edged word. It helps me get through rough patches, but the moment that obsession has to come to an end is a painful one. Ah, well. There's always another one. I also didn't do this consciously, but I think my brain made a correlation between Javier's love for ascots/scarves and the trauma involved with his neck wound. thanks OCD brain!!!
> 
> Thanks for reading, anyone and everyone who swings by. I love hearing your thoughts, whatever you're willing to share.
> 
> also there's an old meme reference in this chapter, kudos if you find it!!!


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